Paddy’s Lucky Forest Slot Review

Where To Play Paddy’s Lucky Forest

While, admittedly, I’m always a little wary when I hear online video slot game developers releasing new Irish-themed slots, St Patrick’s Day is one of my favourite days of the year. So I decided to give Realtime Gaming a pass, and go ahead and review their latest slot release – Paddy’s Lucky Forest.

It doesn’t take much guesswork to figure out what the theme and inspiration behind Paddy’s Lucky Forest is – and the slot is set to hit online casinos just in time for the big Irish celebration. Players will be hoping to have the luck of the Irish on their side while playing, and there’s some progressive jackpots to be won here – so there’s plenty up for grabs!

Paddy’s Lucky Forest is designed around a 5-reel format, and it uses a unique row format, with three symbols on the 1st and 5th reel, four symbols on the 2nd and 4th reels, and 5 symbols on the 3rd reel. This interesting game format is similar to what we’ve seen IGT do in the past, and it means there’s 720-ways-to-win active on each spin; although wins are only formed from left-to-right.

Bet-size wise, Paddy’s Lucky Forest allows players to bet between 0.40 and 40 credits per spin, so it’s a great option for casual players as well as high rollers.

In this Paddy’s Lucky Forest slot review, I’m going to show you what you can expect when playing the slot for yourself. I’ll be giving you an honest and comprehensive look at what the game offers – including a detailed breakdown of the bonuses and features – and to kick things off, I’ll be showing you how to play Paddy’s Lucky Forest, and what in-game options are available during gameplay.

How To Play

Paddy’s Lucky Forest, like the overwhelming majority of Realtime Gaming’s latest video slots, uses the software provider’s new HTML5-based layout, which guarantees simple, fast, and hassle-free gameplay. When it comes to really playing Paddy’s Lucky Forest, the first step is to decide how much money you want to wager per spin.

This is done by selecting your preferred stake level using the plus and minus buttons on either side of the spin button. Once you’ve decided on your stake size, all you have to do now is press the spin button and wait for the next spin to begin!

It’s really easy to play Paddy’s Lucky Forest, and to make your life even easier, RealtimeGaming has built an autoplay function into the slot. This allows you to pre-set up to 1,000 spins to play out automatically, preventing you from having to manually press the spin button each time you want to play a new game round.

A quickspin version can also be found (although I noticed that it’s not available at all online casinos), and this can be used to speed up each spin – allowing you to play more spins every hour, thus increasing your chances of triggering the main bonuses during your playing session.

Symbols and Payouts

Look to the backdrop and you’ll immediately notice that Realtime Gaming has opted to stay pretty much in keeping with what we’ve come to expect from Irish slots; the game’s reels are set on top of a magical forest, and vines can be seen growing up the side of the reels; fair play to Realtime Gaming, Paddy’s Lucky Forest looks great and the design is superior to that I see in many RTG slots today.

When it comes to the symbols in Paddy’s Lucky Forest, Realtime Gaming has gone with playing card suits for the lower-paying symbols – all designed to look like jewels – and including Diamonds, Hearts, Spades and Clubs. These don’t tend to pay amazingly well – and that’s why it’s the premium symbols you’ll be wanting to keep a close eye out for.

The game’s higher-paying symbols include Rainbows, Leprechauns, Fairies and Horseshoes. The latter is the game’s highest-paying regular symbol, and you’ll also find a wild, which is represented by the Clover; this wild substitutes for all other paying symbols, aside from the scatter symbols, which are represented by the Gold Pots; originality at its finest! Jokes aside, let’s take a look at the bonuses and features you’ll find within Paddy’s Lucky Forest.

Bonus Features

Paddy’s Lucky Forest offers a few different bonuses and features, and we’ll take a look at what these are – and how they work – below.

Slippery Wild Feature

The Slippery Wild Feature is triggered when one of the Clover wild symbols lands on reels 2, 3 or 4. When it does, these wilds then turn into – what most of us call walking wilds – and they move down one position for the next spin, with any new wilds landing in view also becoming “slippery”.

It’s worth pointing out that you’re still paying for these spins – but with the addition of the extra wilds it’s much easier to form 5-of-a-kind hits – and if you manage to land a few at once, you can find yourself walking away with some fairly decent hits.

Pick Bonus

There’s also a “pick me bonus” found within Paddy’s Lucky Forest, and this is triggered when three of the scatter symbols land on the middle three reels. Three Pots of Gold will then pop up on your screen, and you’ll be prompted to pick one of these pots. You will be awarded an instant cash prize of up to 50X your stake, an extra pick, or entry to the main free games bonus round.

Free Games

The free spins bonus round in Paddy’s Lucky Forest is triggered through the “pick me bonus” that we just talked about; there’s no other way of triggering it. Once activated, you’ll be awarded 15 free games, and during the free spins, there’s a higher chance that wild symbols will land on the screen – and, with the Slippery Wild Feature active, this means you can end up with quite a few wilds on the screen at once, resulting, hopefully, in big wins!

It’s also possible to re-trigger the free spins feature, and this is achieved by landing another three of the scatter symbols on the middle three reels; you then get to pick again from the Pots of Gold that appear on your screen, and if you pick the “extra free games” option you’ll be awarded 10 additional free spins.

Progressive Jackpots

I’m used to seeing progressive jackpots in Realtime Gaming’s slots, and Paddy’s Lucky Forest is one of their titles that offers localized progressive jackpots; this means that the progressive jackpot is specific to your machine only, and only grows for you, as you play Paddy’s Lucky Forest. 

The progressive jackpots are awarded randomly during the base-game – there’s no bonus round to trigger them – and they allow you to win up to 1,440X your stake. I should also point out that, like in most RTG slots, the higher your bet, the greater your chances of winning one of the progressive jackpots.

Jackpot and How To Win

The maximum win, on paper, while playing Paddy’s Lucky Forest is 1,440X your total stake. This win is achieved by triggering the progressive jackpot within the base-game and being awarded the highest-paying jackpot – the Major.

However, it appears as though you may be able to win more than 1,440X your stake from the free games round. I wasn’t able to definitively confirm that while writing this review, but a few nice returns came my way as a result of triggering the bonus rounds.

It definitely doesn’t look as though RTG have capped the game’s maximum win at that of the progressive jackpot. Still, as a general rule of thumb, I’d say that the win-potential is below 2,000X – so, it’s quite low for a video slot released in today’s online gambling market.

Software

I’m really happy with the new HTML5 software Realtime Gaming has been working on, and the user-interface is incredibly easy-to-use, easy-to-navigate and user-friendly. This is shown perfectly in Paddy’s Lucky Forest, and the game’s crisp, smooth gameplay is made possible thanks to the HTML5 platform.

While writing this review, I tested Paddy’s Lucky Forest on my mobile devices – and I didn’t run into any issues at all.

The game loaded up quickly, I found it easy to select the bet size I wanted to spin at, and I was also able to set up the autoplay function. I will, however, recommend that you tilt your mobile device into landscape mode to ensure the best-possible gaming experience.

Summary

While Paddy’s Lucky Forest isn’t particularly creative when it comes to the theme (actually, it’s probably about as least creative as you can be), we like the fact that Realtime Gaming has managed to take a theme that saturates the online gambling market – and still make it work.

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I think one of the main reasons why it works so well in Paddy’s Lucky Forest is that there’s so many bonuses and features to look forward to – and I love how there’s great win-potential in both the free spins bonus round and the progressive jackpots.

While they’re not going to make you a millionaire, both features are more than capable of producing wins of 1,000X+ – and I’ve got to be fair and say Realtime Gaming has done a great job with Paddy’s Lucky Forest!

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