Emerald’s Infinity Reels a New Slot from Relax Gaming

Emerald’s Infinity Reels – Top developer Relax choose the ever-popular Irish Leprechaun theme for their latest slot.

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We’ve seen some great slots from Relax over the last couple of years, so it’s interesting to see them choose to take a shot at the Leprechaun theme. This style of slot machine has been almost entirely dominated by the various Rainbow Riches games for more than a decade now, despite attempts by almost every top developer to knock them from their throne. How will Relax get on with their Leprechaun-based slot? Let’s find out…

Emerald’s Infinity Reels Overview

Things look good for Emerald’s Infinity Reels initially – the RTP is an above-average 96.6%, and the 3×4 reel area spread across the whole screen looks great, though not quite “infinite” in my book. Actually, it turns out that the Infinity Reels label is a play mechanic that has been licensed from a company called Reelplay.

I hadn’t heard of Reelplay before playing this slot, but it turns out they are an Australian slots developer who was formerly known as Chance Interactive. As soon as Big Time Gaming began licensing out their MegaWays concept, I worried about the future of online slot development.

The trend of slot developers patenting their ideas and concepts can only be a bad thing for the online slots market. When other developers want to use a similar idea in a new game, then find they have no choice but to pay a license fee for it, they will often abandon the idea they were working on favouring something simpler or more generic.

In short, companies like Relax having to pay a license fee for something as simple as symbols moving to the left is bound to stifle innovation eventually. Only time will tell how bad things are going to get.

Symbols & Payouts

Enough of the doom and gloom, let’s take a look at the payouts from Emerald’s Infinity Reels. There are only six symbols on the pay table, three low-paying gemstones along with the higher paying pipe, tankard, and leprechaun symbols. The leprechaun symbol is the highest paying yet still only returns 3x your stake – so what is going on here? Have a look at the Special Features section to learn how this game can award up to 10,000x your stake!

There are a couple of special symbols too – firstly the bonus symbol, collecting three of these during a single spin/re-spin sequence will award you 12 free spins. There is also a 2x multiplier symbol, which doubles the number of symbols you have collected up to that point. During free spins, a special red-colored 2x multiplier symbol can be collected, which doubles the number of ALL symbols you have collected during the bonus round.

I was able to collect a couple of these 2x multiplier symbols during the free spins whilst testing, but even with my Leprechaun counter showing around 40x, in addition to several other symbols,  I still only won around 94x my bet which doesn’t seem to tally with what is shown on the pay table. I don’t know If this is just a free play bug, but I would be careful if playing this slot for real money because of this experience.

Special Features

In Emeralds Infinity Reels all winning combinations are shifted to the left, the winning symbols on the left-most reel are collected, and you then receive a free re-spin. The strange thing about this is that during the re-spin you can only win by hitting the same symbol you did first time around, a bonus symbol, or the 2x multiplier symbol.

This feels odd because you will often see good wins lining up on the reels, but they will be greyed out and will not be added to your tally because they do not match the first symbol you collected. If you manage to collect the 2x multiplier by having it move off the left of the screen, it will double the number of symbols you have collected up to that point.

Try as I might, I have no idea how you could possibly hit a win of anything like 10,000x during either the base game or free spins of Emeralds Infinity Reels.

Emerald’s Infinity Reels: The Verdict

This is a tough one – I can’t help but feel the demo version of this slot available on the Relax website isn’t working 100% correctly. Even if the winnings from my bonus rounds did tally with the symbols I had collected though, I still don’t’ think the stated maximum win of 10,000x is in any way realistic.

This is a fun game, but it isn’t going to dethrone Rainbow Riches – Pick’N’Mix as the best Leprechaun-based slot. I’m sure someone will topple it from its perch one day!