Golden Fields

Golden Fields: Slot Overview

Funny how in the online slot business, when one studio does something, others often follow suit. Maybe it was just us, but it felt like there had been a spate of farm-related slots released around the time Golden Fields from Games Global partner Just For The Win hit the review desk. Then again, sometimes, when you're knee-deep in games, it's easy to lose track of time and get swamped by concepts and ideas. Anyway, it's to the farm we're heading to in Golden Fields to uncover items such as a Wild Plant feature, free spins with a rising multiplier, Super Free Spins, and a pick 'n click bonus game.

Farming must be the life, huh? The sun's always shining, animals are more like friends than livestock, and crops flow from the fields in glorious abundance. At least, that's online gambling's typical presentation of what, in reality, must be a pretty hard job indeed. But hey, we're here to spin reels, not watch a documentary on crop rotation or animal rearing. As such, Golden Fields presents a typically rosy-looking farm with its mandatory red barn (do they exist in real life?), quaint windmill, and a hint of sunflowers and corn along the bottom of the screen. It's all cheerfully jolly, good enough to plough on.

In the middle of a rather busy scene sits a 5-reel, 4-row gaming panel next to four prize values and an x5 Super Free Spins collection meter. Navigating the UI, players can pick a stake of 20 p/c to $/€50 per spin, bearing in mind that the feature progression is saved per bet. A highly volatile game, Golden Fields is available in four RTP configurations, with the highest of the four carrying a 96.13% value.

At this setting, the game has a theoretical hit rate of 29.84%, creating wins from left to right, starting from the first reel across its 30 fixed paylines. Symbolically it's quite a mixed bag, where from low to high are J-A royals, a pear, aubergine, pumpkin, horseshoe, and bell. Landing five-of-a-kind winning lines of these symbols pays 1 to 10 times the stake. The wilds appear on all reels, too, possessing the same value as the bell while also able to substitute for any regular pay symbol.

Golden Fields: Slot Features

Amongst Golden Fields' haul of features, we find the Wild Plant, a Bonus Game, free spins, and Super Free Spins.

Wild Plant

Above each reel is something called a Plant Holder. Whenever a Water symbol lands, it is added to the Plant Holder above it. When a Plant Holder has collected 3 Water symbols, it activates, adding a wild symbol to the top position on the corresponding reel. Then, on each following spin, the wild spreads one position down, eventually leading to a full reel of wilds. Once a reel is full of wilds, it is cleared on the following spin. This feature is available in the base game and both free spin rounds.

Bonus Game

Collecting at least 1 Bonus Token when they hit provides a chance of triggering the Bonus Game. Bonus Tokens only appear on mid symbols on any reel in the base game. If the Bonus Game is awarded at the same time as free spins, only free spins will be awarded.

During the Bonus Game, 14 golden eggs appear on the screen. Players pick them one at a time to reveal one of the prizes. When 3 of the same prize has been revealed, the respective payout is awarded. This equates to 15x, 40x, 200x, or 5,000x for the Mini, Minor, Major, or Mega prize, respectively.

Free Spins

Free spins symbols appear on reels 2, 3, and 4 in the base game. Hitting three of them triggers a theoretically indefinite number of free spins. The round starts with a win multiplier of x1 which increases by +1 after each spin. Wild Plants are active at the start of the round on reel 3, starting at the top position. In addition, landing a regular wild symbol triggers a Wild Plant on the corresponding reel. Wilds do not land on active Wild Plant reels, and the feature ends when no more Wild Plants are on the reels.

Super Free Spins

Landing 2 free spins symbols in the base game contributes 1 point to the Super Free Spins Upgrade Meter. When 20 points have been collected, free spins are upgraded to Super Free Spins. The next time 3 free spins scatters land, Super Free Spins are awarded, which have a starting win multiplier of x5, and Wild Plants begin on reels 2 and 4 from the top position.

Golden Fields: Slot Verdict

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but sometimes it's really hard not to. Plus, authors and publishers spend considerable time and resources coming up with a snappy cover in the hopes of capturing the attention of their target audience and drawing them in. So it is in the online slot world too, where a title and an enticing picture are often all a studio has to grab the eye of potential punters as they scroll through a list.

The title Golden Fields provoked a moment. The name conjured up images of a sunny Southern European country in the middle of a baking hot summer, fields of sunflowers stretching out to the horizon, a warm salty breeze, a heat-hazed blue sky, the timeless romance of the Mediterranean. If the game was going to be half as good as the wistful imagery its name evoked, we could have had quite a slot on our hands.

What followed wasn't as dreamy as a summer memory, but it's not bad if getting all agricultural in an online slot is on the to-do list. Players who might find satisfaction from Golden Fields are not only farm enthusiasts yet those who have appreciated past Just For The Win releases like Amazon Kingdom, Trojan Kingdom, maybe even Divine Riches Diana or Divine Riches Helios at a pinch. Very different themes, to be sure, though the five slots do share a number of commonalities.

It seems like the team at Just For The Win has fallen for a certain formula, or at the least has one or two goto gaming devices it favours and is squeezing as much mileage out of them as possible. As such, if you like the idea of 'indefinite' free spins with creeping wilds, with a decent enough pick 'n click Bonus Game on top, Golden Fields is one to check out.