Whether or not they believe in them, everybody checks out their horoscopes. Therefore Zodiac themed online pokies games are very popular. Microgaming has one such online pokie titled Lucky Zodiac in its portfolio. This is not based on the Western Zodiac, but the Chinese one. The 12 Zodiac symbols in this system are 12 animals and each one of them rules in turn. The 2016 Chinese New Year was the Year of the Monkey. In an interesting twist, the Zodiac animal symbol in the slot game will change at every Chinese New Year. All animals are depicted as cute adorable creatures, but you will have to go through a 12 year cycle to see all of them on your reels. The other Chinese symbols are lantern, fan, urn and blue lotus. The low paying symbols are the playing card icons adorned with a small Chinese icon. The Lucky Zodiac logo is the wild symbol and the firecracker is the scatter symbol.
There are two gaming features in the Lucky Zodiac online pokie. The free spins feature is activated when three or more scatter symbols land anywhere on the reels in the same spin. You will be awarded 12 free spins irrespective of the number of scatter symbols in the trigger. Each free spin that results in a winning combination is allotted a random multiplier. This can take the value up to 7 times. The Zodiac animal acts as an extra wild symbol during the free spins. The free spins can be retriggered. Though there are no win animations in the base game, you have a lively animation of the Zodiac animal during the free spins. The second feature in Lucky Zodiac is the Microgaming gamble game. This optional feature gives players an opportunity to multiply any wins earned in the base game. You can try to guess the color of the next card correctly to double your payout or you can try to guess the suit of the next card correctly to quadruple your payout. If you make an incorrect guess then you lose everything. You can repeat the gamble game till the limit is reached.
Lucky Zodiac is a five reels and three rows video pokie with 20 selectable paylines. As usual it is advisable to play with all paylines enabled. You can wager from 1 to 10 coins per payline. The coin size can be varied between AU$0.01 to AU$2.00. The maximum line bet with all paylines enabled works out to AU$20. The total bet range with all paylines enables is from AU$0.20 to AU$400. This range adequately covers both low roller and high roller Australian online casino players. The maximum line payout is for the Lucky Zodiac logo at 3,000 times the line bet. The maximum scatter payout is 200 times the total bet. The payout table adjusts for the bet amount and reads the absolute payouts directly. The maximum payout per spin is AU$560,000. Microgaming reports a payout percentage between 96% and 97% with medium volatility.