The Grand National Race of Champions Slot
The Grand National is the most famous horse race in England, held each April at Aintree in Liverpool. Online casino games developer Inspired Gaming have managed to negotiate the licence to develop a mobile-optimised slot game based directly on this race, even having some of the actual horses as high-paying symbols.
It’s a 5-reel game, which has symbols arranged over 4 rows and 40 fixed paylines run from the left side. The Grand National Race of Champions video slot comes with a wild symbol to complete winning combinations, plus a unique free spins game which has the potential to pay out frequent prizes before they end.
Everything has been carefully designed to fit in with the theme, so gamblers will see reels with a grassy background, the Grand National logo above them, and it’s all backed by a big picture of horses jumping one of the notorious fences that make this event such a thrill.
Saddle Up for the National
Just 0.20 is needed to get started, and this can be raised to a high limit of 250.00 per spin. Winning lines in the base game are created in the standard way, with players needing 3 or more of the same symbol type to stop across adjacent reels on a payline, starting from the left side.
An Autoplay option sets the reels spinning a set number of times, stopping if certain loss limits are reached, and anyone who like to practice a game before playing for real will find free The Grand National Race of Champions video slots are available.
Colourful playing card symbols J, Q and K will pay the equivalent of 10x the per line bet when landing on 3 reels at a time, while 4 across a line is worth 20x and any 5 of a kind will pay out 100x. The other symbols are pictures of famous horses, including West Tip, Aldaniti, Seagram and Fionavon. The legendary Red Rum is the top paying horse, valued at 80x, 160x and 400x the line bet. The Grand National logo pays even more, with punters receiving payouts of 100x, 200x and 500x the line stake.
Bonus Features Under Starters Orders
A blue wild symbol is able to substitute for all others, apart from the horseshoe bonus. If players have a break in a run of matching symbols and the wild is in the right place to plug the gap, it will act as the missing piece and it counts as a win. It doesn’t pay anything on its own however, so even a full line of wilds won’t be worth a prize.
The lucky horseshoe is also not worth anything on its own, but instead is a scatter symbol that triggers free spins when it lands anywhere in view. If 3 are seen, players are awarded 8 bonus spins, while 4 horseshoes are the trigger for 16 free games and any 5 or more will result in 30 bonus games beginning.
To help make these games more rewarding, any wild symbols that appear will move down their reels one row at a time with each spin. This means that a wild could be on the screen for 4 consecutive spins if it stopped on the top row, and if more wilds appear, players should have the best chance of completing more winning lines before the free games end. Below each reel, there’s a coin symbol that flips with each free spin and if all 5 land the same way to reveal the ‘Extra Spins’ side, players get a further 8 free games added on to the end of the current round.
First Past the Post?
Horse racing and gambling go hand in hand, or maybe hoof in hand, but whatever it is, linking one of the biggest races of the year to an online slot machine is an inspired idea from the appropriately-named Inspired Gaming.
If there’s any criticism, it’s the very minor point that they don’t use actual photos of these famous horse, but there could be very good copyright reasons for this, and the quality of the images is still very high.
The quality of the gameplay is pretty high as well, especially when those free spins gallop into view. Having wilds sticking around the reels for a few spins is a good way to land extra winnings, although it’s not actually a dead cert that combinations will be landed in this round.
