Game in Action
Screenshot of the Golden Ticket Slot
Golden Ticket brings us the circus as it was at the turn of the century. But we’re talking 19th to 20th century, so in the olden days, if you will. The graphic details are beautifully done and set an atmosphere of nostalgia that is enhanced by the soundtrack. You kind of want to get yourself one of those golden tickets the slot promises in order to watch a show.
Symbols include the strong man, a sad clown, the circus director and a few circus paraphernalia. The golden ticket itself stands in as the wild and substitutes for all other symbols. On your left-hand side you’ll see your wins and the applied multiplier for several wins in a row. On your right side the circus inhabitants will be watching over the happenings on the reels.
Of course, you’ll have noticed by now that those reels come in a 5×5 grid and that the slot offers a cascading feature. Symbols fall in from above and any three matching symbols that are adjacent to each other will disappear and leave a Golden Ticket wild behind. That might aid in creating new winnings combinations, but until the round is over, there won’t be any new symbols falling in from above.
Bonuses
The base game, of course, lives on the multiplier feature. Every winning combination you start off with when the symbols fall onto the screen will leave wilds behind and every new winning combination that is created with these will increase the multiplier. Often you won’t get more than 2x or 3x your winnings, but every so often 4x or 5x is possible and when you’re on your way to 8x or more, you’re also on your way to triggering the bonus round.
You achieve that by clearing the screen off symbols. Before each new round you’ll see one or more bonus symbols dance around on the reels. Well, really, it’s the word “bonus” written along the length of a reel. If you manage to uncover one of those words completely, the bonus round is launched.
You’ll be taken to a new screen, which looks like one of those fairground booths where you shoot at a few animal signs in order to win prizes. Here, too, three or more matching symbols will win you prizes, but here you won’t have wilds show up. The free spin bonus is oddly anti-climactic, because you stand to win more leading up to triggering the bonus than in the actual bonus round.
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Summary
It’s a rare slot where you’ll find the base game more riveting than the bonus round. You’ll be hankering for those multipliers to show up after every successive win. The free spins are comparatively boring, even though you will get a multiplier here as well, but there seem to be fewer opportunities to win, because a wild is missing.
Golden Ticket is definitely a feast for the eyes and if you don’t care so much about the bonus game, you’ll have plenty of fun in the base game already, whether you will really get into the free spins or not. Purists are not likely to find this slot appealing, however, because there is certainly a lot going on, visually speaking, and sometimes you don’t even know what you are seeing, or perhaps missing.
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