Lucky Otter

Lucky Otter: Slot Overview

As far as members of the animal kingdom go, few are as adorable as otters. Just look at them darting about the water, floating on their backs, living a charmed life. It's hard to believe they were once extensively hunted for their furs; check out their teeny tiny little paws and cute wittle faces. How could anyone consider blasting an otter with a rifle or smacking one with a club? Fortunately, there is none of that going on in Fantasma Games' online slot Lucky Otter, where willing participants get the chance to inhabit a cute, otter-populated world to try their luck.

Otters are apparent all over the place, appearing on wild symbols which sit over the game grid. Above them is a classic-looking slot angler going by the name of Captain Bob, fishing off a little boat with the help of his otter buds on an inviting sunny day (though it storms up during free spins). Fishing-related slots are famous for their bright disposition, and Lucky Otter takes this idea and runs with it, similar in style to Relax Gaming's Deep Descent or Yggdrasil Gaming's Golden Fish Tank. Basically, if you like hanging out with aquatic creatures in a chipper af, make-believe world when gambling, Lucky Otter is about the acme of that concept, like a brighter version of Otterly Amazing without all the trash.

To partake in some angling with Captain Bob and his otter pal, players first select a stake of 20 cents to $/€50. Statistically, the game is medium-high volatile and produces a lower-than-many-may-like RTP of 94.65%, or 94.84%, when buying free spins. Below the waterline is where the game's 5-reel, 3-row matrix resides, utilising 243 ways to win.

The game actually awards wins left to right from the leftmost reel and right to left from the rightmost reel. However, 5 of a kind wins only pay in one direction. The low pays are 5 gem-like squares with little patterns imprinted on them, while the high pays are 5 variously coloured fish. Getting five low pays in a win pays out 0.2 times the bet, or landing 5 matching high pays is worth 0.4 to 1 times the bet. Wilds can end up on all reels to substitute for any regular pay symbol or award wild wins with the same value as the highest-paying fish. As you'll notice, you can see wild symbols bobbing around above the main grid, ready to drop down should the Avalanche feature allow it.

Lucky Otter: Slot Features

Avalanches, an increasing multiplier, Crab Respin, free spins, and buy free spins are the features to look out for in Lucky Otter if you can tear your eyes away from the furry inhabitants.

Avalanches

Wins trigger an Avalanche, where the winning symbols are blasted off the reels and are replaced by symbols dropping downwards. This creates another chance to win, and the Avalanche sequence continues until no new win occurs. Scatter symbols do not trigger Avalanches.

Increasing Multiplier

In the base game, the increasing multiplier starts at x1, multiplying all wins. After each Avalanche, the multiplier increases by +1. It resets at the end of a spin in the base game and does not carry over to free spins when they trigger. In all phases of play, the highest value the multiplier can reach is x50.

Crab Respin

The Crab symbol landing on the reels activates a Crab Respin when there are no more winning combinations. The Crab symbol removes itself and random pay symbols, activating an Avalanche, thereby increasing the multiplier.

Free Spins

Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols in the base game gives players 10, 15, or 20 free spins, respectively. For free spins, the multiplier starts at x2 and increases by +2 after each Avalanche. The multiplier does not reset while free spins remain. The round can be retriggered in the same way as it is triggered from the base game when 3+ scatters hit. To buy free spins, the cost is 70 times the stake.

Lucky Otter: Slot Verdict

Otters might be adorable, but apparently, in 2021, a gang of around 20 of them ambushed a British man wandering around the Singapore Botanic Gardens, trampling and biting him to the point he needed help standing up. Why, who knows? It's hard to imagine the critters in Lucky Otter doing any such thing. This is charming slot gaming at its utmost endearing. Really, Lucky Otter achieves levels of winsomeness not often seen in an online slot. As ever, pushing something to the extreme risks repelling some people as readily as it may attract others.

Lucky Otter certainly pushes the charm button. No scratch that, Lucky Otter hammers the charm button like a seal eagerly flapping its flippers. Wrong animal, but still. It's not just due to the fuzzy main creatures, either. Each part of Lucky Otter feels designed to pull at the heartstrings and elicit a chorus of 'ohhhs' - from the cheerfully presented game world to the light as a feather feels. The features are relatively light, too, in some ways. Like slots in general, though, they are exciting when they pull together – pay all ways, a rising multiplier, and Avalanching is a solid trio of features. They aren't phenomenally effective since the max win tops out at 4,416.6x the bet, yet this is a pretty standard max win value when compared to a lot of fishing slots, including biggies like some in the Big Bass series.

On a side note, one neat thing about Lucky Otter is that it introduced us to the concept of otter fishing. Yes, this is a thing where otters are/were trained to help people catch fish. Wikipedia tells us the practice began in the sixth century and was conducted in places as diverse as Scandinavia, England, Germany, Scotland, China, as well as India, for example, and is still something they do in southern Bangladesh. Will Lucky Otter be entertaining players for anywhere near that long? Psshh, there might not even be fish (or otters) in the sea in 1500 years' time, so perhaps slots will be one of the ways humankind holds on to the memory.