Hold Your Horses Slot Review

Upon first reading the name of this game, you’d think it would be based on horse racing and everything that goes with it, including jockeys, rosettes and trophies. Well, you’d be wrong. And in this case, quite fortunately wrong. Instead, the game focuses entirely on horses themselves, and doesn’t really make reference to any sporting events. The game takes place in what appears to be a quiet mountain hideaway, with what would presumably be stables in the background. With Novomatic games, there would usually be call for them to alter the incorporated soundtrack. However, there isn’t really anything that particularly stands out as being particularly equestrian-related, so what has been added is a decent enough approach to the game.

Running Free!

This game offers up a fairly familiar layout to players, providing five reels, but with the addition of four rows rather than the usual three. The icons included on these reels include a variety of different coloured horses, all of which are captured in various different stances. These are split across an elegant white horse, a brown horse with white mane, a black beauty, another brown horse with a white patch down its nose, and a third and final one which looks like a stallion. Each of these symbols has what is classed as a double symbol, which features two of the same horse and counts as two icons on a pay line.

In addition to its reels and rows, Hold Your Horses also contains 40 separate pay lines, and these are not customisable. However, all players can alter the bet they place per line by using the plus and minus buttons on either side of the amount already shown. This starts from its minimum of $0.01 and can be increased up to its maximum level of $2. This gives all players the opportunity to place a maximum overall wager of $80 per spin. An ‘Autoplay’ button has also been added to allow several consecutive spins of the reels at the same wager level.

Time to Saddle Up!

This game has one or two extra special features to make playing it a bit more appealing, and this starts with the aforementioned double symbols which will act as two icons in one to make a winning combination. As far as these go, the black horse does not appearing on reels one or two, the plain white and plain brown horse do not appear on reels two or three, and the remaining two don’t appear on reels one or three.

In addition, there is a wild symbol included in the game, which is represented by the product’s logo. This will stand in for all the double symbols and all the standard singles as well as the A, J, K, Q and 10 symbols on the reels in order to create a winning combination. Five of them appearing on a winning pay line will see you receive a pay out of $1,000.

Each reel also has a substitution region of adjacent matching symbols that are not fixed. The symbols appearing in these regions are determined at the beginning of the spin and may vary from reel to reel.

There’s also the inclusive bonus feature. When the first reel is filled entirely with bonus icons, all of them lock in place and the reels will re-spin. During the re-spins, bonus symbols are added to the stacked regions. The reels continue to re-spin as long as new bonus symbols are locked or until the freespins round is triggered – which is done so by covering the whole screen in bonus symbols.

Should you manage to trigger this round, you’ll be presented with 15 freespins of the reels, and if during the round, the first reel is entirely filled with the same horse symbol, the ‘Hold Your Horse Feature’ is activated. The symbols on reel one, as well as all logo symbols and all matching single or double horse icons will lock in place, and the previous re-spin feature takes place.

Whoa!

It’s not so often that we can praise Novomatic in such a wholehearted way, as while they have some great themes to base their games on, often times they fall slip short of producing a product which ticks all the boxes. This one is graphically pleasing, has interesting game play and a whole host load of special features as well.