Celtic Slots
The Spanish brand the MGA Group, not the Malta Gaming Association, have a knack for creating classic slot games, and Celtic is a prime example of this. Although the loading screen makes you think you’re in for a modern day 5-reels type game, once the play screen loads you’ll see the traditional 3-reels and 1 payline format.
Due to its classic nature, it leaves behind any sense of an immersive story and instead focuses on helping you grab as much cash as possible. While they steer away from storylines, they have included a great number of bonus rounds in their title, which is less than in-keeping with classic slot machines.
Overwhelmed though you may be, stick with this one as it promises to be a fulfilling and entertaining way to enjoy your evenings. Not to mention it’s pretty simple to play once you get past the busy appearance of it all - at its core it’s simplistic and thus user friendly. You just have to dig a little deeper to discover it for yourselves.
Still interested? Then let’s take a look at the gameplay itself.
How to Play
As we’ve already said, the controls are quite basic once you master them, it just takes time, especially if you’re a newbie to the slot scene.
There are nine different buttons upon the control panel, which sounds a lot, but actually when you take into account that three of them do the same job, the interface starts to look more welcoming.
The three widgets that are the same are the nudges, and they symbolise the 3-reels you have to play. During your playthrough of the main game (the game you start with), you will be rewarded random nudges, indicated by the leaves of the clovers beneath the reels. Should you have a nudge to play, you won’t be able to spin again until you’ve played it; decide which reel the nudge will be most advantageous to use on and then play it.
As for the auto button, that should be straightforward, not that it was for us as it never worked. We clicked it several times and each time we had to manually spin the reels, though whether that’s a bug or the actual gameplay we can’t say, either way it was annoying.
Moving onto arguably the most important bit now, the bet; you need to cast your eyes over the list of symbols and amounts on the left hand side of the screen. Although the amounts are the payout for each series of matches, they also inform you of the payouts you get depending on the credits you play. In Celtic you can play with 1, 3 or 5 credits, and you only need to click the bet button to scroll through those three amounts.
The Game Itself
The base title is very simple – match and get monetary rewards. But once you start hitting the bonus rounds (depending on which one you get), things change tactic and more variety is introduced.
There are four bonus games, not including the top game, that can be activated during your rounds, each of them with their own set of benefits.
When you get three of the jugs, aka the pint mugs, you will be rewarded some free spins on the house, thus saving you money for bets but giving you the chance to win funds back. A win-win all round. Should you line up three of the coins, which seems to be next to impossible, you will be taken to another type of slot machine game; there’s no need to really explain what you do when there.
The next couple of bonuses are related to the upper game, and thus can’t be triggered when playing the main one. If you find three hats you’ll be taken to a screen which allows you to pick a hat to reveal cash, very basic but good fun. Then there’s the scratchcard game that’s activated once you match three mushrooms on one of the paylines (there are multiple in the upper game as opposed to just one).
Thoughts
Celtic is definitely a specialised taste that only niche audiences will enjoy, but that doesn’t take away from its variance and volatility, which t has buckets of. If you loved this title, you’re sure to savour plenty of other MGA titles as they follow a similar format, only changing up the designs. Go have a browse and see if you fall in love with them or walk away frustrated.
