Golden Shamrock Pokies
While some people may be rolling their eyes at the thought of yet another Irish-themed online casino pokie, Net Ent have worked their usual magic and turned their Golden Shamrock video pokie into something a little bit different. Free spins with multipliers and wild substitutions that expand to cover entire reels are the main bonus features here, but the classic images of leprechauns, pots of gold, lucky clover and pints of beer ensure that tradition is still respected.
It’s got an equally traditional 5-reel layout and 20 paylines run across, with matching symbols stopping on adjacent reels across a line from the left being needed to get a winning combination. Not all lines need to be played at once, so the low limit is just 0.01 per spin and if this is still too much, free Golden Shamrock video pokies can be played at most casinos. The upper limit is set at 100.00.
Everything plays out against a backdrop of trees and vines, with the payline indicators displayed on the leaves, while a bright blue sky sits behind the symbols on the reels. The game has a nice cartoon style and as expected from Net Ent, it’s colourful, reliable and has a fair return to player percentage.
Playing Golden Shamrock
A single page of the pay table reveals what each of the main symbols is worth and down at the bottom end of the scale we see a brown money bag with the playing card Q embroidered on it. This returns 3, 15 or 30x the equivalent staked per line when it stops on 3, 4 or 5 reels, while the K and A money bags are each worth a little more.
Seven other symbols are more directly themed, starting with an accordion that’s worth 7, 30 or 100x the line bet and moving on up through clinking beer glasses, a pipe with strange purple smoke coming out of it, the leprechauns’ green hat and a harp. The top symbols only need to be on reels 1 and 2 across an active payline, with the horseshoe returning between 7 and 2000x when it lands and the between 10 and 4000 for the pot of gold.
Our friendly leprechaun, happily smoking his pipe, is a wild symbol, able to replace all except the scatter to help complete winlines when he turns up on reels 2, 3 or 4. It’s also an expanding wild so any time it appears it will fill all of the reel landed on and this makes it more likely that the symbol will be able to fill in any gaps in a line, or extend a win over additional reels.
Golden Shamrock
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Free Spins Bonus Round
The Golden Shamrock that gives this game its name turns up as a scatter symbol, able to trigger a special bonus round by landing in any 3 or more positions at once, although like the wild, it doesn’t have any real value on its own. Before the spins begin, players will see the scatters light up and will need to click one of them to reveal how many spins will then play out along with a multiplier that’s applied to any wins throughout them.
Bonus spins will now play out and it only takes 2 more scatters appearing in a single game to give punters another round once the current games have finished, so they could end up with lots more spins, and coin win multipliers of between 1x and 5x. The standard set of symbols are used however, so it’s not actually certain that players are going to get these wins, and getting a 1x multiplier is going to be a bit of a disappointment, but in general, bankrolls are going to get boosted once the free spins begin.
The Verdict
An Irish-themed pokie could be completely devoid of any bonus features and still attract a willing audience who just like to associate the topic with good fortune. Net Ent could have just stuck a picture of a leprechaun on the reels and had a hit on their hands, but in true style they have given the Golden Shamrock video pokie some excellent features.
Even in the base game there’s some massive payouts, particularly when the all-important pot of gold turns up, but what we really want to see is the wild symbol expanding across reels to give extra rewards and of course, the potentially valuable free spins bonus round getting triggered, where multipliers could see players Dublin’ their money or more.
Fans of the genre and those who just want to trigger decent bonus features should try this game out, although it’s not mobile-optimised so they will have to play at the desktop versions of their favourite sites.