Golden Tour Slot – Free Demo

A five-line golf course, played 310 times

That's Golden Tour for you in brief - vivid and cheerful with a lot of character, albeit rather constrained by its fixed set of paylines. I put 310 spins through it at 1.25 a spin. There's more to discover, however. Keep reading if you wish to learn the complete story. I started on 1,000.00 and finished on 906.27.

Golden Tour is a 5-reel, 3-row video slot with 5 paylines, and it is playable on all devices. An optional Dollar Ball lottery runs alongside the slot for anyone who wants a second thing to pay for. Core to the game is the club-pick bonus. Playtech has kept it plain enough that it needs no patenting. Playtech's catalogue also holds Fire Blaze Golden: Amazing Factory and Frankie Dettori's Magic Seven.

Golden Tour carries a formal theme that is quite intriguing, attended by the courteous quiet of a fairway. The graphics are sleek and vivid, and plenty of understated animations are at work to help make the game seem dynamic and lively; one immediately becomes part of this round of golf as soon as the reels start spinning. My balance peaked at 1,002.17 on spin 81, which was the only time it sat above where it began. There are no unanswered questions as far as the story is concerned, because the golfers pursue trophies, and so do you. The longest I went without a win was 11 spins, ending on spin 94.

The golf ball that only helps other golf balls

On the reels, you will discover the low-value symbols depicted by shoes, a drink, a flag, a golf bag and a cart, while the higher-value symbols are made out of two distinct coloured golf balls. Three separate scatter symbols sit outside that set of golf props. The wild symbol is the double golden golf ball, and it also has some distinctive traits. Five of those across a complete payline is the highest line prize at 2,000 times the line bet. My own best spin was nothing like that: spin 228 paid 52.50, or 42.0 times the stake.

The wild substitutes only for the other golf-ball symbols. It will not aid the shoes or the cart along, so that reduces the number of ways a line comes together. With only five paylines, that substitution has five places on the grid where it can matter at all. But it also means the paying lines you do get tend to be the ones worth having. My five biggest spins of the session ran from 11.0 to 42.0 times the stake.

Three scatters of one kind, one swing

3 or more scatter symbols of the same type - a gopher, a duck or a fish - grant the bonus game. Three scatters of three different types do nothing. The player selects a driver, an iron and a putter and takes a swing, and the prize hinges on the clubs; more scatters means a larger multiplier on the bonus prize. The picks resolve into one shot, and the round closes on the single paid figure that shot produces.

There are no free spins here. What the clubs return is down to luck rather than aim. The bonus does not retrigger, so what you choose is what you receive, and across 310 spins the bonus arrived three times. The first came on spin 60, the second on spin 251 and the third on spin 279. The spread was broad: 29.0 times the stake on the first, then 3.2 times the stake nearly 200 spins later, then 20.0 times the stake. The gap between the second and the third was only 28 spins. Between them they comprised 22% of everything the session won. In cash that was 65.25 out of the 293.77 the session returned.

Our Minty Verdict: Three club-pick rounds in 310 spins supplied 22% of everything I won, and the rest of the game is five paylines and a wild that is fussy about who it helps. The 97.71% on the label did not show up in 310 spins, which came back at 75.8% - a short run on a game with this much weight in one feature will land wherever the feature lands.

Where the 75.8% came from

Although the golf-ball symbols and the wild mean players will still see hits land frequently, I would much rather have preferred Golden Tour to be a win ways slot, if I had some saying. Across those 310 spins I staked 387.50 and got 293.77 back.

Golden Tour is clearly all about the club-pick bonus. Two of my three bonus rounds landed inside the last 60 spins of the session. That is where the money is. Being a middling-volatility slot, however, players can expect to see plenty of frustrating low-paying spins; my 310 spins returned 75.8%, with 94 paying spins of which 49 came back under the stake. The low point was 899.88, a little over a hundred below where I started.