Lock A Luck slot allows you to lock reels for better chance of winning

As part of their exclusive arrangement with Microgaming, All41 Studios have released their Lock A Luck slot, which does away with Free Spins. Hmm why, you might ask?

Making the brave decision to do away with a Free Spins bonus game to instead focus on a rather simple but effective bonus, two or more reels 'locked' together on every spin, the Lock A Luck slot is a medium variance game that offers the chance to win up to 80,000 coins on a spin.

So is this game going to be a sure fire hit with Microgaming players? We decided to take a look to find out.

Overview

• Game: Lock A Luck
• Developer: All41 Studios (for Microgaming)
• Reels: 5x3
• Pay Lines: 243 Ways to Win
• Minimum Bet: 0.20
• Maximum Bet: 60.00
• Jackpot: 80,000 coins
• Free Spins Bonus: No
• Other Bonuses: Yes
• Progressive: No
• Volatility: Medium

Presentation

It is fair to say that A41 Studios have gone back to the roots of slot gaming with the Lock A Luck slot. The reels are very simplistic with just a dark blue background and little in the way of any distractions. The main controls of the slot are at the foot of the reel and that is essentially all you have to look at.

The sound on the slot is rather more appealing with a rather groovy soundtrack playing as you spin the reels. In essence, what you have here is a slot game that has been stripped back to its bare essentials, which in an era when slot games are becoming even more expansive and spectacular to look at, is a brave approach.

The key when you present a slot like this is that the game has playability in spades so let us now take a look at whether the Lock A Luck slot delivers on this too.

What is on the reels?

I would class the Lock A Luck slot as very much a retro-styled game in that it has the look and symbols you would come to expect from a retro slot. We still have the playing card low symbols on the reels and there are six of these in total going from the nine through to the Ace.

There are also five higher value symbols and these are where the more retro-styling of the slot comes into play with the symbols being the cherry, four leafed clover, the horseshoe, the lucky 7 and a diamond, which is the highest paying of the symbols offering 50x your total bet if you can land five across the reels.

There is just one other symbol on the reels, which is the Wild.

Wild features

The Wild symbol is simply the word Wild and this is used only as a substitute symbol in the game. It appears only on the middle three reels of the slot but it can substitute for all of the symbols in the game to help create winning lines. Obviously, the more Wilds you can land across those middle three reels, the better chances you have of triggering a sizeable win.

Free Spins features

The Lock A Luck slot does not feature any Free Spins bonus game, but instead what it does have is a Reel Lock feature which triggers on every spin, and which has the potential to see you land some huge wins in the game.

The bonus triggers on every spin and what happens is that two adjacent reels of the five in play will become "Locked". This means that they will spin together and display the same symbols both during the spin and at the end of the spin.

Of course, you need to land these symbols in conjunction with symbols on the other reels to trigger a win and this doesn't always happen of course, but when it does, some decent sized wins can be won, especially if Wilds appear on the reels too.

However, what makes the bonus to appealing is that on some random spins more than two reels will become locked together. This means you can have three, four or even all five reels locked together. The more reels locked, the more of the same symbols will appear on the reels and that increases your chances of a big value win.

It should also be noted that symbols can be stacked on the reels, which means you could possibly end up with all five reels displaying the same symbol when all five reels are locked together, and this is when some of the really huge wins in the game become a possibility.

Best feature of the Lock A Luck slot

There's no doubt that the Locked Reels feature is the main focus of the Lock A Luck slot. The Wild does play an important role in the game and can lead to some very important and welcome wins in this medium variance slot, but the fact that this slot is built around those locked reels is really what the whole game is about.

For me, it is a good bonus because it triggers on every spin and while it doesn't always offer a win, you do know that if you can get four or even five of the reels locked together, the potential for some big wins is there. Pleasingly, these higher value wins are not too difficult to hit, but you do require patience and a bit of luck in order to land them.

Conclusion

The Lock A Luck slot from All41 Studios is very much on a similar theme to a famous NetEnt game called Twin Spin, indeed, you could call this a clone of that game. However, A41 have done a fabulous job in capturing the essence of the game well. I feel the Lock A Luck slot is a game for slots purists who want a bonus that moves away from the somewhat ubiquitous Free Spins bonus you find everywhere nowadays.

The game is challenging but fair and it does suit a medium variance approach, where wins don't come along too often, but when they do, they can be genuinely rewarding. This does give the player a positive feeling when playing the game and means that they get a nice sense of achievement when they hit one of those bigger value wins.

You can play the Lock A Luck slot at any of the Mega Moolah casinos.