Chinese New Year Slot Review

Every February or so, according to the lunar calendar, the entire Chinese community all over the world gathers to celebrate the new year with fireworks and dances. This has become the subject of many slot games in the past, and we are here to look at one of the most classic: the soberly named Chinese New Year by Play’n Go.

In this vibrant video slot game with medium volatility, players will have no less than 15 paylines to deal with at every turn. On top of this, Chinese New Year has some very interesting surprises and plenty of fireworks to enjoy – so let’s dive right into it with our full review of the game.

Let the Celebrations Begin

Chinese New Year is your classic Chinese slot game. Nothing too original on the reels, but beautiful graphics showing the reels placed within the structure of a temple, decorated with golden dragon statues on the sides. Even the command bar at the bottom of the game screen is covered in gold, dark and red ornaments.

The traditional background music could be heard in any Chinese restaurant, which makes Chinese New Year feel a little too cliché to our taste. That being said, the beautiful graphics and animations manage to save the day.

Watch out for Loose Rockets

The basic rules of Chinese New Year are simple: pick a wager and spin the reels. You can use the command buttons underneath the reels to choose the coin value, your next wager and the number of paylines you want to place it on. Given the number of paylines available, you can bet from 0.15 to 18.75 credits per turn, depending on how much money you are willing to risk. Chinese New Year includes an autoplay game mode, if you are in a hurry to win big, as well as an optional gamble mini game to try and multiply all your rewards even further.

The medium volatility of the game gives players decent chances to score cash prizes on the reels frequently, as was our experience testing the game. Interestingly, the reel symbols of Chinese New Year represent the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac: pig, dog, rooster, goat, horse and so on, with a top prize of x1000 reserved for the lucky players.

Three Bonus Features to Choose From

There are many ways to spice up your game in Chinese New Year. Take the tiger symbol, for instance: this is the wild card of the game, ready to replace the basic animal symbols on the reels. Tiger combinations are also worth up to x5000. Landing a combination of 3 dragons triggers another special treat: a firework-launching bonus game, worth up to 150 times your total bet.

Scoring 3 monkey symbols in Chinese New Year is also the key to opening up the bonus wheel bonus. Spin it to win up to 5 free spins and turn a regular symbol into an extra scatter.

Classic Looks Coupled with Original Bonuses

Chinese New Year could be the model of any future Chinese-themed slot game: traditional music, colourful graphics, dragons, fireworks and plenty of other fun details. As far as originality is concerned, this game clearly does not score very high. But we still appreciated the quality of the graphics and the fun bonuses. The fireworks bonus game was particularly entertaining.

There are other Chinese slot games with a more sober atmosphere, take Chinese Dragon from Merkur, just to give an example. But if you are going in that direction, you might as well go all-in and enjoy an exuberant and entertaining atmosphere, which Chinese New Year is very happy to provide.