Carnival Riches Slot Review
Carnival Riches is a jackpot slot that refuses to hand you a free spins round, and it’s all the better for it. Rather than the usual scatter-and-spin routine, All For One Studios puts every stall on the pier to work: mallets, tin ducks and goldfish in bags each carry a piece of one growing jackpot ladder. You come here to build a prize rather than wait for one.
That’s the interesting thing about it. There are no free spins here at all; the game runs on three stall features, a growing jackpot ladder and a bonus buy. It’s a 5×3 grid with 25 fixed paylines, medium volatility and an RTP of 96.20%, with stakes running from 0.20 to 50.00 per spin.
You’ll find more from the same studio in our reviews of 11 Coins of Fire and Pig City Life. The fairground is open either way, and the jackpots are what’s shouting loudest.
Base Game & Features
Wins pay left to right across 25 fixed paylines, and if multiple winning combinations land on a single payline, only the highest one counts. The total payout for a spin is the sum of every payline win on it. Payline payouts are based on the initial bet, which is the total bet divided by a payline cost of 10.
A win needs matching symbols on adjacent positions along a payline, and there’s no way to reduce the lines: all 25 are always in play. Each spin costs the full total bet, whatever the payline arithmetic underneath it.
The wild lands on reels two to five, substitutes for all symbols except the Scatter and the Mallet, and doesn’t pay on its own. It’s a base-game symbol. Scatters also sit on reels two, three and four, pay nothing themselves, and three of them anywhere triggers the Duck Shoot feature.
Whac-A-Mole
Each reel has its own prize container. When a Mallet symbol lands, a Mole carrying a cash prize or a Balloon pops up in that reel’s container. The Mallet has to land again on the same reel to collect, and once a reel’s prize is paid, its container clears ready for the next one.
What the Mole and the Balloon do differs, and it’s worth keeping the two straight:
- Mole – pays a cash prize of 1x to 100x the bet when the Mallet lands again on its reel
- Balloon – pumps up every jackpot on the ladder, and can also uncover a Catch & Match trigger
Because a Balloon only pays out through the jackpots, a Mallet landing on a Balloon reel is the slow-burn outcome: nothing immediate, but the ladder behind the reels moves. When Catch & Match is won, it plays out only after every Whac-A-Mole prize on that spin has been revealed, so nothing gets skipped. This is a base-game feature; the bonus rounds don’t re-run it.
Carnival Riches Bonuses & Jackpots
Duck Shoot
Three Scatters start the shooting gallery. The number of shots you carry in is decided beforehand: a counter in the base game tracks scatter pairs, and every time exactly two Scatters land, it climbs by one. It runs from a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 20, and resets to 5 when the feature ends.
That counter is the quiet engine of the whole game. Near-miss scatters, which would be dead symbols in most slots, here carry forward into a bigger round later, so a pair you’d normally shrug off is doing real work.
Each shot hits one of 30 targets, and each target hides one of three things:
- Cash prize – 1x to 10x, 15x to 18x, 20x, 50x or 100x the bet
- Two-direction arrow – horizontal arrows collect every prize on their row, vertical arrows take the column
- Balloon – raises all jackpot values and can also uncover a Catch & Match trigger
The arrows are where the round swings. A cash target next to a stacked row can turn one shot into five prizes, so where an arrow sits matters more than which duck it’s attached to. The ducks themselves are pure theatre: the prize is decided the moment the spin starts, not by where your shot lands. One restriction worth knowing: Duck Shoot and Whac-A-Mole can’t trigger on the same spin, so the two stalls never compete for your attention.
Catch & Match
Catch & Match can trigger from the base game or inside Duck Shoot, whenever its trigger symbol appears. Fifteen gold fish are laid out, and tapping each one reveals a coloured bubble: yellow, red, purple, green or blue. Collect three of the same colour and the matching jackpot pays out, ending the round there.
- Yellow x3 – Grand Jackpot, a fixed 5,000x total bet
- Red x3 – Mega Jackpot, minimum 200x up to 1,000x bet, grown by 4x increments
- Purple x3 – Major Jackpot, minimum 50x up to 250x bet, grown by 2x increments
- Green x3 – Minor Jackpot, minimum 20x up to 100x bet, grown by 1x increments
- Blue x3 – Mini Jackpot, minimum 10x up to 50x bet, grown by 0.5x increments
Everything except the Grand grows as you play: Balloons in the Whac-A-Mole and Duck Shoot features push the values up, and the Mega, Major, Minor and Mini climb from their minimums until they’re won. Each jackpot resets to its minimum once paid, so a single long session can climb the same ladder more than once. The Grand stands apart, fixed at 5,000x and immune to boosts.
Buy Feature
There’s a single purchase option, and it skips the scatters entirely:
- 120x current bet – triggers the Duck Shoot feature with the full 20 shots
The purchase plays at your current stake and works only from the base game, so the price scales with the bet. Twenty shots is the maximum the counter can hold, which is what you’re paying the premium for: an organically built round starts at 5 unless you’ve been landing scatter pairs, and most will sit well short of the cap.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.8/10
Playing Carnival Riches feels like working a shift at the fairground rather than wandering it: you’re malleting moles for pocket money, saving up scatters, and pumping every balloon you can find because the jackpots behind the stalls keep inching upward. The one reason to pick it over a standard scatter slot is that ladder, and specifically that it grows while you play instead of sitting still.
The scatter pairs feeding the shot counter is the cleverest piece of design here, because it turns the near-miss into progress rather than a tease. The fixed Grand is the let-down: 5,000x is a modest ceiling for a jackpot game, and no amount of balloons will ever raise it, which leaves the growth all in the smaller tiers.
This is one for players who enjoy building something across a session and cashing the smaller jackpots on the way up, not for anyone chasing a four-figure multiplier. For the patient fairgoer content to keep feeding the balloons, the prizes on the midway are real ones.
Carnival Riches FAQs
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How do you trigger the Duck Shoot feature?
Land three Scatter symbols anywhere on reels two, three and four. Landing exactly two Scatters adds one shot to the counter, which builds towards a maximum of 20 shots before the feature starts. -
What does the Catch & Match feature pay?
Collecting three matching coloured bubbles awards a jackpot: the Grand pays a fixed 5,000x total bet, the Mega runs from 200x to 1,000x, the Major from 50x to 250x, the Minor from 20x to 100x, and the Mini from 10x to 50x the bet. -
How much does the bonus buy cost in Carnival Riches?
The Buy Feature costs 120x your current bet and instantly triggers the Duck Shoot feature with the maximum 20 shots. It’s available in the base game only. -
What does the Balloon symbol do?
In Whac-A-Mole, a Balloon appears when the Mallet lands on a reel whose container is holding one. In Duck Shoot, it’s one of the possible target prizes. Either way, every jackpot on the ladder gets a boost, and a Catch & Match trigger symbol can be uncovered alongside it. -
Can Duck Shoot and Whac-A-Mole trigger on the same spin?
No. The two features can’t be triggered on the same spin. Catch & Match can follow either of them, but only after every Whac-A-Mole prize on that spin has been revealed. -
What is the RTP of Carnival Riches?
The RTP is 96.20%, and it stays at 96.20% with the Duck Shoot feature in play. -
What are the minimum and maximum bets in Carnival Riches?
Stakes run from 0.20 to 50.00 per spin, across 25 fixed paylines on a 5×3 grid. There’s no way to reduce the number of lines in play. -
Who makes Carnival Riches?
Carnival Riches is made by All For One Studios.
