Lucky Leprechaun Clusters

Lucky Leprechaun Clusters: Slot Overview

Like the alpha crocodile at a water hole that only needs to feed once in a year comes iconic developer Microgaming with a slot built in-house titled Lucky Leprechaun Clusters. An interesting project choice, as Lucky Leprechaun Clusters mixes modern gameplay with the traditional look and feel of an old school Irish themed slot. The reason for this is because it's an upgrade of one of Microgaming's semi-older slots called, you guessed it, Lucky Leprechaun.

Released back in 2015, Lucky Leprechaun collated a bunch of Irish cliches, and for better or for worse, they are practically all back for the remake. This means the same mountainous background as before, though strangely, despite the increased grid dimensions, they are more visible now than they were before. The graphics are, well, not amazing. Microgaming has largely stuck with more of the same. Pleasant enough, warm, though instantly dated. Like SG Digital's iconic Rainbow Riches slot, it feels like there is a specific audience into this sort of thing that Microgaming is catering for, modern graphics and effects be darned.

Lucky Leprechaun Clusters is a cluster paying slot played on a 7x7 sized game board. Landing five or more adjacent matching symbols forms a winning cluster which occurs at a rather high hit frequency of 41.68%. Interestingly, despite the high hit rate, volatility has been labelled as 'very high', so collect the wins while you can. All of this feeds into a decent RTP value of 96.31% and an equally decent, though not amazing, max win figure of 4,600x.

Providing stakes of 10 p/c to $/€50, symbols are, well, they're the same as they were before, too. On the low side, that means 10-A card ranks with Celtic patterns on them for decoration, then pipes, glasses of beer, fiddles, and leprechauns as the premium symbols. Winning clusters trigger the Rolling Reels feature, which removes the applicable symbols from the board, allowing new ones to fill the gaps. Consecutive wins can rack up on a single spin, ending when no new cluster forms up.

Lucky Leprechaun Clusters: Slot Features

Lucky Leprechaun Clusters revolves around collecting winning symbols in a feature meter located next to the game grid. Collecting symbols here then trigger features at certain levels, leading to a bonus game when completely filled. The first 4 modifiers are:

• Pots o' Gold – collect 21 symbols to have wild symbols added in random positions, while the symbols surrounding wilds are removed in a rainbow pattern to let new ones drop in.
• Rainbow Road – collecting 42 symbols adds wilds while removing symbols in a row and column to let new ones onto the board.
• Lucky Coin – collecting 63 symbols adds random wild lucky coins to the game grid to help create winning clusters.
• Shamrock Shake – collecting 84 symbols randomly selects pay symbol types, and all instances of them are removed from the reels.

Trail of Fortune

Should you be lucky enough to collect at least 125 winning symbols, the Trail of Fortune Bonus is activated. When this feature is unlocked, the grid is removed from the screen and replaced with a trail covered in squares displaying bet multipliers of increasing value. A wheel is spun a certain number of times, moving players along the trail. Make it all the way to the end, where a pot at the end of a rainbow contains a top 1,500x prize.

Lucky Leprechaun Clusters: Slot Verdict

Lucky Leprechaun Clusters is jaunty, leprechaun-y, possesses pleasant visuals and a cracking Celtic tune. Players into older looking Irish slots would do well to consider having a wee jig with Lucky Leprechaun Clusters then. A Rainbow Riches vibe permeates every single one of Lucky Leprechaun Clusters' pores, so if you have a soft spot for that series, then this should be right up your rainbow. Of course, the corollary is true too, though, so if you think that sort of game should have hung up its boots years ago, then nothing Lucky Leprechaun Clusters says or does will make you change your mind.

On to the gameplay, and if the aesthetics haven't won you over, then it's unlikely the features will either. They're a tad predictable, not necessarily in a bad way, but don't come to Lucky Leprechaun Clusters looking for trailblazing imagination. The modifiers released when the right number of winning symbols have been released are okay, nothing special, mainly involving adding wilds or removing existing symbols for second chance cascades. The Lucky Coin modifier can be surprisingly effective should enough coin symbols land in the right places.

That just leaves the Trail of Fortune, which will probably be just as divisive. The bonus round isn't really as intense as some fevered pitch feature-filled free spins session, yet a Trail was included in the original game, so it kind of had to be jammed in here somewhere. In saying so, though, the original slot managed to squeeze free spins in as well, just saying. This just leaves potential, and at 4,600x the bet, it's pretty decent, nothing amazing, but on the same level as the Reactoonz range, for comparison, so no complaints.

Lucky Leprechaun Clusters is a kind of a strange release. Microgaming isn't exactly slinging slots off the production line in great numbers, more often parcelling out jobs to their partners instead. So why did they choose to do this then? Hard to say. Perhaps it was a personal pet project done for the lols. Like some banker that's amassed a fortune greater than they'll ever be able to spend and can now step out of the rat race to do something they're passionate about like fishing, golf, or découpage. The question is whether Lucky Leprechaun Clusters will better suit old-school leaning players who are looking to branch out or modern gamers pining for something retro? Maybe both, maybe neither.