Golden Lantern Slot

Get ready to travel to the Orient and discover great fortunes in Golden Lantern. With a soul-soothing soundtrack and tranquil surroundings, the slot feels like it is about to restore balance. The lucky cat is your guide and companion in the quest for hidden treasures, and if you join it in a series of missions, you might be the one that receives the bountiful rewards. 

As a typical Asian-themed slot, Golden Lantern is filled with oriental symbolism, including lotus flowers, fans, and the lucky cat itself. But, whether it is as rewarding as it sounds, it is up to us to check out. So, follow my lead through this Golden Lantern slot review, to find out together if the slot can, indeed, take you to great treasures. 

The minute you load the slot, you are taken to a small Chinese village, with typical Chinese temples on the left and right of the 6-reeled grid. High mountains with snow-covered tops peek from behind, and you even see a small lake between them.

The grid itself is placed upon the entrance of the temple, and on it, you see a yin-yang symbol, fans, rolls, lotus flowers, lucky cats, and playing card royals in Chinese style. The soundtrack is soothing and suited to the theme, too, so overall, there are no remarks on how the developer depicted the theme. 

You can press the bet button to place your bet, anywhere between 20c to $100, of course. But, next to the grid, there’s an extra bet button that you can press to pay 25% more and get better optics at triggering wins and free spins more often. 

As soon as you set your bet and enter the paytable, you will see that symbols pay according to your bet level. The highest-paying lucky cat gives you 50x the stake for a winning combo of 12 symbols or more. Other high pays are the fan, the lotus flower, the three golden coins, and the roll. Playing card royals, of course, are low-pays. 

There is no wild symbol, but you do get a second chance at a win whenever you form a winning combo. Winning symbols are removed and new ones fall from above, giving you the chance to land another win.

As expected, you need to land enough scatters to trigger free spins:

• With 4 scatters you get 10 free spins;
• 5 scatters trigger 15 free spins;
• Land 6 to trigger 20 free spins;
• 3 or more scatters in the free spins bonus trigger 5 more free spins, up to a maximum of 300.

Multipliers appear on the grid during the free spins, with a value of 100x, 50x, 20x, 10x, 8x, 5x and 2x. At the end of each spin, winnings are multiplied by the sum of the multipliers on the grid.

When you press the Craft Bonus button, you can activate the buy bonus slots option. The higher price you pay, the higher the probability of getting big wins. You have one of three options, with a price depending on the bet per game. Set your bet level and press Start, and with that, you’ll have purchased your way into the bonus.

The moment I saw that I could immediately purchase my way to the free spins, I took the chance. I placed a 20c bet on the game and paid $10 to get 10 free spins. I won $3,35. 

I then played a few rounds with the max bet but had to lower it to $10, as I was running out of credit. Eventually, in around 20 spins, I won $56, but couldn't trigger the free spins organically. As I ran out of credit, I gave up, of course, and didn't invest more into the slot. 

Golden Lantern is a highly volatile online slot with an RTP of 96.02%. It offers a max payout of 2,000x the stake. 

In my experience, Golden Lantern is not a slot you will want to play again. Sure, it is okay to give it a twirl, but not a slot you will play in the long run. As you can see from my experience with it, it has some fun elements, but you run out of credit pretty quickly. 

In hopes of finding greater treasures in a Chinese-themed slot, try Yggdrasil’s Mega Pearl Gigablox instead. It comes with a better payout potential and frankly, better theme representation. AvatarUX’s Imperial Coins is another excellent slot that you could try at top casinos, offering the same theme but way better payouts.