Mafia Gold

Mafia Gold: Slot Overview

Given the mafia's reputation for ruthless violence, it would take a brave or foolish person to try and get their hands on mob riches. Or, players can attempt to do so in a virtual world, courtesy of Mafia Gold, an online slot designed by developer Play'n GO. Willing participants in this game are slung back to an earlier swinging anything-goes era of bullets, safes, taking out the competition and reaping the rewards while looking dapper at the same time. The end justifies the means, as some have paraphrased Niccolò Machiavelli.

A short intro clip sets the scene for Mafia Gold, a newspaper headline proclaiming mafia warfare spreading throughout eastern New York. And what a swanky, attractively rendered world it is if you can look past the law-breaking and murder. Make-believe crime in slots has an established history and can be quite enjoyable, depending on how it is dealt with. Kudos to Play'n GO for designing a believable game world for wannabe dons to lose themselves in, or pretend they're up and up wise guys, with the riches of the city lying open before them for the taking like an all-you-can-eat salad bar.

Mafia Gold's gaming area has a 5-reel main zone where the regular symbols hit and an attached feature reel playing different roles, whether the base game or the free spins round is active. All reels have 4 rows on them, and 30 paylines are there for evaluating line wins. The volatility is high in Mafia Gold, and of the five RTP configurations that Play'n GO has designed, 96.2% is the highest. Bet levels range from 10 c to $/€50.

Jazz era 9-A card ranks are Mafia Gold's low pay symbols, awarding 2 to 4 times your stake when a line of 5 land on the reels. After them are 4 gang members and the top boss symbol in two versions - gold (the Mafia Gold symbol) or red. Combinations of 5 matching character symbols pay 5 to 10 times the bet. Wilds hit on each of the five reels. They substitute for all pay symbols and have the same payout value as the most valuable pay symbol.

Mafia Gold: Slot Features

Mafia Gold's feature reel plays an important role. In the base game, it can grant multipliers; in free spins, it provides bullets to eliminate gang members or cash prizes. Two additional features pad out the base game - Drive By Wilds and Mystery Instant WIns, while the Cash Hit feature becomes available in free spins when all gang members have been eliminated.

Win Multiplier

In the base game, to the right of the main reels is a feature reel displaying blank spaces or multiplier values of x2 to x10. When a special Mafia Gold symbol lines up with a multiplier, all line wins are amplified by the corresponding multiplier value. Win multipliers are available in the base game only.

Drive By Wilds

The Drive by Wilds feature can trigger on any base game spin, adding wild symbols to the reels. Up to 11 wilds can be added.

Mystery Instant Win

After any free spins tease, when there are scatters on the reels, there is a chance of getting a mystery instant win. The mystery instant win appears on one or more of the scatters, awarding 5x to 20x the bet.

Free Spins

Players win 10, 15 or 20 free spins when 3, 4, or 5 scatters land on the reels, respectively. In the free spins feature, cash values may appear on the feature reel. All cash values (1x to 10x) landing on the feature reel are collected by a safe. The safe's total value is paid at the end of free spins.

Bullets also land on the feature reel. Lining a Mafia Gold symbol with bullets fires them at the gang members displayed above the reels. It takes 10 bullets to eliminate a gang member. Eliminated gang members are replaced by the top pay symbol. It might be possible to win +5 extra free spins for each elimination, but the game info was a little unclear on this, and it never occurred during the test session to verify either way.

When all gang members are eliminated, +5 free spins are awarded along with the Cash Hit feature. For the Cash Hit feature, lining up Mafia Gold symbols with safes on the feature reel wins their value. Safe values are the same value that was accumulated.

Mafia Gold: Slot Verdict

Play'n GO appears to have put a solid amount of effort into Mafia Gold, as evidenced by the atmospheric game world it produced. The short but sweet intro animation sets the mood and is backed up by a rather attractively presented urban New York scene once players move into the actual game. A good first impression was made, in other words, and the gameplay that followed wasn't bad either. Dead spins weren't exactly shy of hitting, though, and activating a multiplier from the multiplier reel could be a chore. The multiplier reel didn't feel as active in the action as those found in games like Candy Blitz or Candy Blitz Bombs, from memory, but better to have it on hand than not, huh.

As well as being hard to get multipliers out of in the base game, it was hard to get many bullets from the feature reel in the free spins round, too. Eliminating even one gang member was tough business. Almost equally tough was collecting big piles of cash values in the safe. These gangsters really did not want to relinquish their grip on the loot. A respectable 6,000x the bet max win provides a lure, though one which is tempered by the probability of occurring of 1 in 2,000,000,000. That's intimidating, even for Play'n GO.

After a while, Mafia Gold started feeling like a laborious, style-over-substance game. The features on offer here are well thought out and all, but often weak, and not enough of them triggered with enough force to encourage a second session. Technically, they might go off, and the audiovisuals paint a vibrant mob picture, so there could be room here for the right player to try getting their don on.