About The Slot
Emerald Isle is made up of 20 optional paylines. Bets start as low as 1p per payline and can go up to 5 pounds. This game caters for all players with any bankroll size and risk appetite. I played this game on a day I felt particularly broke. I only had few quid in my casino account, yet Emerald Isle gave me ten good minutes of escape. Talk about stretching your dollar!

Emerald Isle’s reels are decked out with the typical Irish symbols, including a clover, a rainbow, a Gaelic princess, a leprechaun and a pot of gold. Here are the few symbols that you should look out for:

• The leprechaun is the wild symbol that substitutes any symbol in the game to complete winning combinations.
• The rainbow is the scatter symbol that gives away free games. You’ll get 10 extra spins if three or more rainbows line up on a single payline. The best part of all? All wins during the free games are tripled!
• The rainbow scatter also offers bonus coins when two or more of them appear on the reels. You can get two extra coins when there are two scatter symbols and 100 if you land five of them.
• The Irish princess with curly red hair offers the highest rewards – 1,500 times your wager whenever five of them appear on the reels.

I’d say that Emerald Isle is a fairly non-volatile slot. The wins are nice and consistent, if not a little small. The game pays players in small amounts over small hands. It won’t give you major jolts of adrenaline as other blockbuster titles would (if it’s random big spins are what you’re after, you may want to check out this feisty slot, Siberian Storm).

However, that’s not to say that Emerald Isle is boring. This slot distills the very magic of slot machines – it captures you in a soothing trance, one that’ll have you playing for hours. The game works by perfectly balancing reward and frustration. High volatility slots can frustrate some players because the rewards are less frequent, but low volatility slots are very easy to play.

How Does This Mobile Slot Perform?
Unfortunately, Emerald Isle is rendered in that awful cartoony style carried by many slots all over the Internet. The game is painted in bright colours and twinkly sparkles, similar to Dora the Explorer and your kid’s cartoons. When refreshing the game, NextGen didn’t bother to give a full makeover for the game’s looks. Even though the artwork is refreshed, they still seem to have been drawn using computing software from the early to mid-2000s.

I am quite the slot snob and prefer beautiful slots! (Have you seen slots by NetEnt? All of their new slots are masterpieces! Check out Theme Park: Tickets of Fortune.) As for music, there’s are Irish tunes playing in the background throughout the game. A joyful Irish jig comes on whenever the Leprechaun wild is activated; the Leprechaun will even dance along!

Finally, Emerald Isle meets the industry’s bar for reliability. I’ve played it on both my mobile and laptop. The game’s controls are as they should be. There are simple arrows to configure the number of paylines you want to play as well as your bet level. If you’d like to play hands free, you should definitely go for the Autoplay option. It’s very flexible and allows you to stop the game whenever you win or hit a bonus game.

Game Features: Treasure Chest Bonus Game, Extra Spins!
As one of the Internet’s first online slots, Emerald Isle is a simple slot with not much in the way of features. There’s the Treasure Chest bonus round, which is unlocked if the Leprechaun appears on both reels one and five at the same time. It’s a match-two game. The game kicks off with a wooden grid filled with six treasure chests. You’ll click on them to reveal what’s inside; and match chests with the same amount of cash within them. Find three matching symbols and you’ll move up to level two, with more multipliers when you get matching symbols. Get another three and advance to level three. The feature game ends when you fail to make a match.

Without a doubt, the next feature that Emerald Isle sports in the Extra Spins. To trigger this feature, you will need three scatter symbols anywhere on your reels. Once you have gotten those, you will be awarded 10 extra spins to play with. Good thing is that your chances of winning cash prizes during the extra spins are tripled! I guess the leprechaun has decided to be a bit more generous with the extra spins…

Refreshed Features all over
It’s quite refreshing to play simple slot games, especially in a time when modern slot developers try to pack as many features as they can in each slot. Emerald Isle is extremely slim in comparison. There’s a wild symbol, some extra spins and a simple bonus round. Despite that, the game moves at a nice quick pace, so you’ll never get bored. More importantly, I can easily play Emerald Isle for half an hour, as the game really sets me up in a nice little zone.

This simplicity reminds me of how all the bells and whistles on the slot – the music, fancy animation, mini games, innovative new features and the rest of the gang – is only distraction to keep you hitting spin. If a slot is properly configured, even the most basic of features can hold your attention and entertain.

However, the one thing that Emerald Isle does not succeed at is having players come back for the second time. The game is a touch too simple and that gets a little boring. There are many, many other slots vying for your attention and as players, why shouldn’t you have a taste of everything there is on offer?