Oh boy, Pot of Fortune, that's got to be another leprechaun slot, right? The name alone was enough to do that thing where bile rises in the back of the throat as a precursor to chundering. Another one, not another one, what have we done? However, after putting the professional hat on, choking back the emotions, and giving Pragmatic Play's slot, Pot of Fortune, a whirl, you know what? It managed to turn out to be not too bad. Kind of fun, actually.
Still, the beginning of the journey didn't begin overly positively. Pot of Fortune just looked boringly generic to start with. The background area is grassy hills, mushrooms, that sort of clutter, while the active gaming space looked like a throwback to an earlier, more basic era of online slot design. Meh was the first reaction. One mood enhancer was the excellent music, which has impressive toe-tapping abilities, especially during free spins where the musicians find their groove and wind themselves up into a delightful Celtic-inspired frenzy.
Framed by gold strips, Pot of Fortune's gaming grid consists of 5 reels, 4 rows, and 20 paylines. Regular symbols pay left to right on adjacent reels from the leftmost side of the reels in what is a highly volatile online slot. The default return to player value clocks in at 96% whether playing 'normally' or buying the free spins round. No mention is made of the RTP when using the Ante Bet, but very likely it's the same or similar. Base bets of 20 c to $/€240 may be selected, and with the Ante Bet engaged (meaning double the chance of triggering the bonus), stakes increase by 50%.
One slight deviation from the norm is that the leprechaun in Pot of Fortune is a lady for a change. She is the highest-paying symbol in the game, followed by a top hat, a pair of curly boots, a beer mug, and a pipe as the premium symbols. After them come 10-A card ranks. Hitting 5 matching highs pays out 6 to 125 times the bet, while 5 matching lows are worth 2 to 5 times the stake. Different types of wilds may land, where the gold coin and the golden wild pot can substitute for all symbols.
As its features, Pot of Fortune offers free spins with sticky wilds and a bonus buy facility.
Hitting any combination of 6 or more golden wild pots or purple scatter pots awards 8 free spins, which cannot be retriggered, and neither wild pot nor scatter wild pot appears in free spins. Each symbol that triggered the free spins feature transforms into a sticky gold coin wild symbol which stays locked into its position until the end of the round.
Free spins can be instantly bought from the base game at a cost of 80 times the bet. When free spins are bought, 6 or more wild pots or scatter pots randomly hit.
Like the leprechaun theme, the features in Pot of Fortune are hardly avant-garde. But that didn't stop them from having significant enjoyment levels. This is mostly down to the intoxicating power of sticky wild symbols. No, wilds don't get multipliers in Pot of Fortune, which could have pushed the game into the realms of ludicrosity, yet even without them, they're still pretty potent. The funny thing about the sticky wilds is that even when not winning big, there's a 'feeling' they could, if only x, y, and z symbols landed in a certain spot or two. Maybe next time… Maybe not.
As a result, Pot of Fortune had a surprising amount of compelling replayability. The bonus buy feature was tempting, too, because you literally get at least 6 sticky wilds, which means it is technically possible to turn the round into a batch of win spins. It's not hard to see Pot of Fortune getting a decent amount of playtime, as its free spin round (bought or not) provides a prime setup for some potentially entertaining win clips. Compounding the game's infectiousness is the theme. Yes, leprechauns have been flogged to death by casino game makers for years and will probably continue to do so for a long time to come. But darn it, when handled right, as Pragmatic Play has done in Pot of Fortune, you can see why the leprechaun theme and the upbeat slapping-a-knee in an Irish pub atmosphere is such a perennial favourite. Have to say the music trumps the visuals, though, in this game.
Perhaps Pot of Fortune turned out to be better than expected because the initial expectations were way down there, squirming in the mud. Whatever the case, Pot of Fortune is a jolly, playful, spirited leprechaun slot that has little novelty to offer but makes use of what it does possess in a satisfying way. For a fairly cliched, generic, unimaginative, yet wholesomely enjoyable mid-tier leprechaun slot, Pot of Fortune is a cheerful option.
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