Leprechaun Heist

Leprechaun Heist: Slot Overview

Software provider Blue Guru Games bill themselves as a studio with a passion for tales, and Leprechaun Heist comes with one of the more interesting backstories. Apparently, the idea of making Leprechaun Heist came about when a member of the team revealed that two of his relations are Clarence and John Anglin, who escaped from Alcatraz in 1962 and are still wanted by the FBI. From there, the studio delved into the topic of Irish American lawbreakers. In fact, there is a bunch of interesting facts on the subject available at the studio's website should any reader be keen to dive deeper. Or, for now, if you'd prefer to find out about an online slot based around an Irish American-infused bank-robbing idea, do read on.

The name of the game is Leprechaun Heist, and before it loaded, we were expecting another one of those actual leprechaun slots which takes place in a sunny, green, rainbowed part of the Emerald Isles, full of pipes, beer mugs, and four-leaf clovers. Leprechaun Heist isn't like that at all. It's got an Irish touch to be sure, to be sure, but this is a long way from following a charming sprite to a pot of gold. Instead, players are presented with three mask-wearing crims as they race inside a bank to conduct a heist. Leprechaun Heist's degrees of originality, from the bottom-up camera angle to its creative theme and Dropkick Murphys-inspired soundtrack, managed to trigger a healthy dose of interest as to how it would follow through.

Before getting to the good stuff, some numbers stuff first. This means bet selection, where players can choose stakes from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin on any device. In the centre of the screen sits a 5x5 to 7x7 dynamic game grid, paying a reward when at least 8 matching symbols land anywhere in view. This scatter-paying slot produces a maximum theoretical return to player value of 96% and has been labelled as medium-high volatile.

As for symbols, from bottom to top, we find green, blue, and red jewellery, a stack of banknotes, a necklace, gold bars, and three character symbols. Eight-of-a-kind scatter wins pay 0.1 to 1 times the bet, whereas the most valuable scatter wins consist of 25+ symbols and are worth 3 to 30 times the bet. Interestingly, Leprechaun Heist does boast wild symbols at certain points, with the ability to substitute for all pay symbols.

Leprechaun Heist: Slot Features

Leprechaun Heist is a game that fires off modifiers and features when certain numbers of consecutive wins take place. When a scatter win hits, the symbols in it are removed by the tumble feature and are replaced by symbols falling from above. If a new win is created after the symbol drop, the process is repeated. A bullet is added to the meter next to the reels following a win.

Ammo Level Ups

During a single base game spin, Ammo Level Ups occur for every fourth consecutive bullet collected, up to a maximum of 16 wins, like so:

• 4 wins trigger the Random Wild feature, placing a random number of wild symbols on the reels.
• 8 wins trigger the Symbol Upgrade feature, upgrading a randomly chosen symbol type to a higher value type.
• 12 wins trigger the Symbol Transformer, where a random symbol type is transformed into another type.
• 16 wins trigger the Heist Free Games bonus round, awarding 8 free spins.

The Heist Free Games

During Heist Free Games, one thing that changes is some symbols may land containing multipliers of x2 to x5. Ammo Level Ups remain in play, but when reaching 16 wins, +5 free spins are awarded. Also, Leprechaun Heist may come with a feature buy function. This lets players buy The Heist Free Games for 75x the bet, with an RTP of 96%.

Leprechaun Heist: Slot Verdict

At the time of writing, Pragmatic Play had largely dominated the scatter win style slot category, built off the backs of games like Sweet Bonanza and, later on, Gates of Olympus with its numerous sibling slots. Now, Blue Guru Games has come in to shake the genre up a bit with the release of Leprechaun Heist, and it's done an ok job of it too. Part of the game's appreciation began when scouring Blue Guru Games' site on the off chance of stumbling upon some extra info. After combing through the origin story, interest was piqued, and it helped Leprechaun Heist make a warm impression. Particularly thrilling was the banging soundtrack, practically making the game worth trying out on its own.

As well as marvelling at the unorthodox camera angle and bitchin' tunes came actually firing Leprechaun Heist up and putting it through its paces. For the most part, the playthrough was a positive one. Wins hit quite frequently, leading to equally quite frequent modifier triggers from the Ammo Levels Up feature. Buying free spins isn't super pricey either, for eligible players who aren't in the mood for stringing together the required 16 wins. One possible area of concern is that symbol values aren't massive, so even long chains of wins, with modifiers hiffed in there with the intention of helping augment them, don't mean an impressive payout is going to result. As a comparison, the symbol values are noticeably higher in Gates of Olympus, and its multipliers can be much higher too. However, none of this has had a horrendously detrimental effect on Leprechaun Heist's winning potential, which at 6,706 times the bet, is higher than its Ancient Greek rival. Although, there's no mention of max win frequency to really compare apples with apples.

It's not without its wrinkles, yet Leprechaun Heist provided a fairly positive experience when all was said and done. There might be bigger, badder gangster slots on the block, but Leprechaun Heist's engaging sights and sounds complemented the gaming side of things to create a relatively lively slot.