Maneki 88 Gold

Review

This is an ambitious title that always tries to come up with great features, and it can certainly be proud of this one. It’s one of the most complex Asian-themed games on the market, and we’ll need to spend quite some time explaining all of its ins and outs in this review. We’re happy to spend that time for top games, though, so let’s jump right in! To kick things off, we need to mention that this game takes place across 5 reels, 3 rows and 243 ways to win.

Thematically, this game builds on Chinese animals and myths, which makes for a surprisingly relaxing atmosphere. The production values are very high overall, and it’s clear that the designers spent a lot of time making everything look this good. We appreciate that a lot, and we’re definitely glad that they poured so much effort into the package!

Let’s now take a look at the mathematical model of this game. Its volatility is medium, and you can win up to 2,614x your bet if everything lines up perfectly. The least that you can play for is £0.08, while the game’s max bet is £88. The theoretical RTP of this game is then 96.90%, which is almost one percent above the 96% golden standard.

Features

There are 10 pay symbols in this game, and they are divided evenly into low-paying ones and high-paying ones. For low-paying symbols, there are card ranks from Tens to Aces. For high-paying symbols, there are golden fish, turtles, phoenixes, pandas and tigers. The catch is that turtles, phoenixes, pandas and tigers can also be golden, though whether they will be that is completely up to you. You can always select how many of them should be golden, and going for more increases your bet accordingly.

For special symbols, this game has Flower Wilds and Door Scatters. Flower Wilds substitute for other symbols in winning combinations, while Door Scatters trigger the Free Spins feature – but, as always, there’s a fair bit more than that to them!

We’ve already said something about golden symbols, but let’s explain that fully. There’s a clickable bar at the bottom of the playing field that shows the game’s high-paying symbols. One of them is always active and golden, while the other symbols aren’t active by default. You can click on them to activate them and turn them into golden symbols, which increases their payout values. It also adds a bit more pop to the rest of the gameplay, though it will increase your overall bet.

If you land 3 or more Door Scatters in view, you’ll trigger the Free Spins feature with 10 free spins. Retriggers are possible, and you can get up to 300 free spins in total. During free spins, there are only high-paying symbols, Flower Wilds and Door Scatters on the reels, which makes winning big easier. To that end, it’s worth it to have as many golden symbols as possible!

Flower Wilds can appear only on the middle three reels, but they come with coins attached if you have at least 2 golden symbols in action. All such Flower Wilds are automatically collected. Once you have 12 of them collected, you’ll get a chance to trigger the Jackpot feature whenever a new Flower Wild lands. This feature has the form of a small minigame that will net you one of the game’s 4 jackpots. They are called Mini, Minor, Major and Grand, and you’ll have to play with all 5 golden symbols in action if you want to be able to win them all.

If waiting for Door Scatters just doesn’t sound like fun to you, you can always use the Buy Feature option and simply purchase free spins outright for a set price.

Review Summary

If you put everything together, it should be easy to see that this is an excellent title that delivers in every single regard. It’s complex, too, and it gives you plenty of betting options to choose from. It can be confusing at first, but there’s every chance that you’ll want to play with as many golden symbols as possible – after all, that’s how you can get to the slot’s top payouts!