Happy Birthday

People around the world celebrate their birthdays in different ways, but a common tradition is to have a cake with the same number of candles on it as the years you have been around. The Happy Birthday slot, available at Eyecon online casinos, brings this simple celebration to the reels and gives players plenty of reasons to feel like it's their own party. The graphics are a little funny since they include all kinds of symbols like a panda wearing a pointed party hat, but they fit the theme really well, and it goes so far to include birthday balloons floating all around the reels.

Game Layout

You'd think of a birthday party as being a lighthearted time that doesn't take itself too seriously, and that's a lot of what the format creates for this game. There are five reels with three horizontal rows, and there are 25 paylines across those reels. However, the lines pay in both directions, which increases the hit-rate, decreases the volatility and drops the stress down quite a bit. The lines are variable, so you can change how many are activated, but keeping them at the maximum will make sure that your payout rate stays as high as possible in this game.

Wild Streamer Multipliers

Wilds show up in the form of a streamer, which is a really popular thing that shows up at all kinds of parties, and you never know when you're going to get covered in one. This makes it a good, fitting wild symbol. This wild can appear on any of the reels, but it also acts as a multiplier. When any winning combination includes a streamer, it'll find itself doubled in value. This adds a tremendous amount of value without increasing the volatility much at all.

Birthday Cake Scatters and Free Spins

The ultimate birthday present in this slot is a round of free spins. There's a birthday cake scatter symbol that makes its appearance on all reels, and when you score at least three of them on the reels at once, then you will be given a play at this bonus round. The basic idea is that you'll be given 15 free chances to hit wins via 15 free spins no matter how many scatters you used to activate this bonus feature.

There are two things about this feature that make it stand out. First off, you can re-trigger it over and over again up to 15 total times. Second, you'll get a multiplier of 3x applied to all of your wins that happen during the free spins mode. What's more is that this 3x multiplier combines with the wild 2x multiplier, and that means that you'll have chances to earn multipliers as high as 6x.

Birthday cake scatters also pay scatter wins. Five of a kind earns 450x, and you'll get 20x for four. Wins of 5x and 2x can be had for combinations of three or two located anywhere on the game board. These are multiplied by your whole bet.

Other Payouts and Prizes

Five of the wild symbol gets players 9,500x as a major jackpot. You can score 950x for five of the panda or 950x for five of the purple hippo symbol as well. The bottle popping gets you 450x for five, and five of the glasses of champagne clicking together gets players a 250x win, which is the same as five of the heart balloons.

On the lower end of the pay table, you really only have two tiers of symbols to worry about. Cupcakes and bouquets of flowers each get players 125x for five on an activated payline. For the music note, present, party hat and blower toy, all of the wins are 100x when five of a kind combinations are won. This pay table has a large jackpot but is balanced overall and offers players plenty of ways to get paid at high, medium and low levels.

Note that five of a kind wins are only paid once instead of paying in both directions.

Overview

We like the Happy Birthday slot because it relies on gameplay and a simple theme instead of trying to reinvent everything like you see with some titles. The features aren't uncommon, but they work together with the pay table to create a style of play that's heavy on big chances to take down serious prizes. This is the type of thing that keeps players engaged, and it gives this slot a serious level of replay value.