Shamrock Miner

Theme and Design

Shamrock Miner, in keeping with its name, draws heavily on traditional Irish themes for its design work. Pretty much all the elements you might expect are here including the rainbow, lush green hillside, lucky clovers and Irish leprechaun. It’s nothing spectacular and the slightly cloudy skyline and dark entrance to the mine give the whole slot a somewhat gloomy feel in fact. Thankfully that is offset by an upbeat guitar track – with Irish flute of course – and the rattling sound of the reels spinning like wheels on a mining cart.

Visually this is not Play n Go’s greatest work, but can still hold its own in a crowded slots genre.

RTP and Variance

Like most Play n Go slots, Shamrock miner has 5 available RTP settings. They are 96.29%, 94.28%, 92.28%, 87.29% or 84.27%. Which you play will be up to your casino operator to decide. We checked out the RTP at 5 popular slot sites in the UK to see which setting they had chosen. This is what we found:

• Casumo (independent) – 94.28% RTP
• BacanaPlay (Skill on Net) – 91.28% RTP
• Barz Casino (White Hat Gaming) – 94.28% RTP
• MrQ (Independent) – 96.29% RTP
• All British Casino (L and L Europe) – 94.28% RTP

It is not unusual for many slot sites to run Play n Go games at a lower than optimum RTP as you can see from our list. We recommend that you play at MrQ which is the only casino in our list to run the game at 96.29%.

The variance of Shamrock Miner is medium-high with a fairly even win distribution, but potential to pull off some big wins in the bonus round where the reel set expands and multipliers can hit 30x.

If you enjoy high variance games then also check out our list of the top 20 high volatility slots.

Maximum Win

Shamrock Miner has a maximum win of 5,000x. This is Ok, though not on the scale of Play n Go’s highest max win games. Slots like Kiss Reels of Rock (50,000x) and Clash of Camelot (35,000x) offer much better potential. You can also check out our list of the highest max win games of all time for more choice.

Symbols and Paytable

Shamrock Miner starts on a simple 5 reel and 4 row grid with just 12 active paylines in play. Until the reels start expanding as wilds are collected, then new rows are added and more paylines come into play.

Wins are triggered by landing 3 or more identical symbols across paylines from left to right.

There is some really good value in the paytable symbols alone before we even get to the multipliers, making this look like a promising game. Low payers are the cards, 10 through to Ace. These are valued at from 0.5x for 3 10s right up to 10x for 5 Aces. Premium symbols are represented by the gems – yellow, purple, green and red. These are valued at from 2x for 3 yellow gems right up to a massive 200x for 5 red symbols.

Keep a good eye out for the Wilds as well because they sub for all other symbols to complete winlines AND collect up values from cash symbols. So they are powerful!

Finally, there are dynamite scatters which trigger free spins when 3 or more land. But they have no cash value in themselves.

Features and Gameplay

Shamrock Miner is not stacked with unique features. However, the bonus round looks like it can offer some thrills thanks to its progressive features, and the use of a random multiplier also throws up some interesting unpredictability.

Watch Out For Wilds, Cash Symbols and Multipliers

The base game is straight forward.

As well as standard wins, keep your eye out for Wilds to land at the same time as Cash Symbols which look like rocks with diamonds in them. If these two land at the same time then the cash symbol value is paid out.

You should also watch the Cash Multiplier meter to the left of the reels which has values of 1x, 2x, 4x and 10x. This changes at random and is applied to all wins. In testing it never got as high at 10x but regularly moved up to 2x or 4x.

Cash symbols can be valued to a maximum of 50x. Combine that, or the 200x for 5 Aces, with a 10x Cash Multiplier and you can see how Shamrock Miner might kick out a decent win or two.

Progressive Free Spins Round With Expanding Reels, Re-Triggers and Enhanced Cash Multipliers

The free spins round is where things get more interesting.

To unlock the spins you need 3, 4 or 5 scatters to land in the base game. That gets you 10, 15 or 20 spins.

Now, the gameplay is the same, but with some nice enhancements. A little mining cart appears above the reels to collect any wilds that land and act as a meter that tells you how far you are from the next level of free spins and Cash Multiplier you are.

Every FOUR Wilds that you collect triggers another row on the reels which can grow to up to 7 rows high. Each new row adds 5 more paylines. Every FOUR Wilds will also get you 10 more spins and increase the range of the Cash Multiplier to the left of the reels until it maxes out at 30x.