Leprechaun Hills

By this point, Irish themed slots are so popular and have been done so many times that you can probably already tell us all the symbols in the game and the only real question about the visuals is which shade of green they decided to use. Regardless, Quickspin’s release manages to excite with gameplay rather than visuals, a somewhat uncommon trend in an industry that seems intent on playing it safe. Not that Leprechaun Hills rocks the boat too bad, but what it does offer is pretty fun to play around with.

It’s hardly the most eye-catching slot currently on the market. The leprechaun symbol looks like he might want to borrow some of his own gold to see a plastic surgeon, but the rest of the icons look good, if a bit flat and uninspired. It doesn’t seem Quickspin is as interested in the graphical arms race as bigger developers, so while we can’t award them any points for doing something new or unique, we can certainly accept the graphics as passable.
The gameplay loop is much more fun, on the other hand. All the medium symbols can activate a re-spin when they’re part of the winning combination, and the re-spin is always stacked with the same icon that contributed to the win last time around. On top of this, there’s also a free spins bonus which only happens when Scatters appear on the second, third and fourth reel at the same time. You’re spinning in hopes of activating these two bonuses, and you can get some minor wins outside of them as well.

Quickspin’s newest release is rather up front with what you can expect from it. While the single highest win is little more than 25x the wager for a five of a kind win, you can soar past that when the special features are active. It’s a precarious balance, and it’s easy to enter losing streak periods, but the game always helped to bounce us back after a while. The biggest win in Leprechaun Hills for us was 164,5x our stake, a great deal more than what we were expecting when we first saw the paytable.

The slot itself splits symbols into low and medium wins. Low wins are gambling card icons such as 10, J, Q, K and A, while medium win symbols are beer, mushrooms, a four leaf clover, a golden horse shoe and a leprechaun in sore need of a nose job. Apart from being stereotypically Irish, it’s important to keep a track of the medium icons due to the bonus that is attached to it.

Any time any of these medium symbols are part of a win, they trigger a re-spin. This re-spin takes the icon that completed it and super stacks it on the re-spin, which is usually a pretty solid win just waiting to happen. That said, it also has a habit of throwing an unrelated stack of symbols in between to block it, so it may not be as great as the free spins.

Meanwhile, the free spins seem a lot more elusive, but a lot more profitable. Both our highest wins happened on these extra turns, and to activate them, you need Scatters on reels 2, 3 and 4 at the same time. This will award you 7 free spins, although there are no other bonuses that the game tells you about. But it’s fair to say the wins are boosted for these 7 spins. It’s a shame you can’t retrigger them.