Lucky Durian is a Fruity New Slot Game from Habanero Gaming
Habanero likes to tinker with Asia-inspired slots, and Lucky Durian is one of these. Admittedly, this slot is loosely themed on a tropical Asian fruit rather than culture, which makes a change. Even so, the point stands. Durian is a fruit with a strong odour and something that few people in the West can stomach, but that isn’t something we’re going to be saying about Lucky Durian.
Bonus Feature Video | Demo Game
We’re of the mind that there are many features in this game that will appeal to at least a more significant chunk of the population than the fruit it’s themed after.
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100% Bonus up to R3,000As a slot, Lucky Durian features the same crisp, colourful graphics that many of its sister slots do. It is bubbly; it has mobile-optimised imagery and a menu bar that is easy to use, with big and bold buttons. The big question, though, is if it has anything else to offer bettors. We’re glad you asked. Join us as we explore the rest of the game’s features in our Lucky Durian slot review.
Spin Betting Options
Lucky Durian is considerably cheaper to play than the fruit is to buy. Launched in January 2022, this game features just fifteen paylines spanning five reels. Naturally, this means that players in a pinch can get away with minimum stakes of just R0.15 a spin. Make no mistake about it, though; this doesn’t mean that Lucky Durian is only for the cautious or more reserved bettors.
Habanero has ensured that you can effectively bet up to R300 a spin in this game. That’s just as well, given that Lucky Durian has a highly volatile nature. An RTP rate of 96.77% is right where we would expect Habanero slots to be, but at 4,375x a bet, the non-progressive jackpot seems a little light compared to that volatility level.
Game Features Video
Slot Game Features
The symbols in Lucky Durian are considerably similar. You’re looking at various fruits, dissected in the middle and displayed in a bubbly format. They can dish out modest prizes, of which the best-paying isn’t a standard symbol at all. It is the wild symbol. This Durian icon only pays if five-of-a-kind appear on a line, and it can substitute for any standard paying symbols in the game. To help you land those wins, the paylines face both directions. In short, you can win with combos running from the rightmost reel to leftmost, instead of solely the usual left to right direction.
Other special features are a bit on the light side here. That does not mean that Lucky Durian is devoid of them, though. Wild symbols, for instance, can expand to cover entire reels. We’ll explain how that works and where re-spins come into the picture below.
Locked Re-Spins
Land a wild symbol on the reels and have it feature in a winning combination, and the Locked Re-Spins Bonus kicks into gear. Here, the wild symbol will expand to cover an entire reel. It will trigger three re-spins to boot. During those re-spins, any wilds will expand and remain locked into place. You’ll always have at least one reel unlocked, so the feature can keep going as long as new wilds appear. This is the simplest and most likely pathway to landing a five-of-a-kind combo with wild symbols, thus pocketing the non-progressive jackpot.
Our Verdict
Lucky Durian is what it is. What you’ve got here is a part Asia-inspired slot, but one that is also heavily themed on fruit, and we use the term “fruit” loosely. Lucky Durian has an interesting theme like that. However, in terms of gameplay and features, the Habanero slot does feel a little underwhelming. A free spin bonus or a second screen stage certainly wouldn’t have gone amiss in this slot release.
