Finn and the Swirly Spin Slot Review
A leprechaun in a green coat sits piping away on a sunny hillside, a rainbow over his shoulder and mushrooms sprouting around the carved stone slabs that frame the reels. Most Irish slots lean on the clichés and stop there; Finn and the Swirly Spin is one of the few that earns them, because NetEnt built its bonus around actually walking into the gold rather than landing on it.
It runs on a 5×5 grid with a 96.62% RTP, cluster-style wins that pay horizontally and vertically, and a hit frequency of 22%. The maximum win is 300x the bet, with stakes from 0.10 to 200 per spin. That ceiling is modest next to NetEnt’s own Finn and the Dragon Tales, though it sits comfortably in the company of Starburst and Aloha.
The Spiral Grid and How Wins Pay
There are no paylines here. A win is any horizontal or vertical line of three or more matching symbols, anywhere on the 5×5 grid, and a single row or column can hold more than one win. Only the highest win per match is paid.
Wins aren’t influenced by the motion of the symbols. Once they’ve come to rest, a win evaluation is done on how the 5×5 grid looks, and that’s the moment that counts. The spinning is theatre; the payout is decided by the final arrangement.
After every win is evaluated, the winning symbols explode and the remaining symbols avalanche downwards to fill the gaps. If that produces new matches, the process repeats until no further wins land. One spin can therefore chain several payouts.
The Wild Loop
The wild, a gold star, stands in for every paying symbol on the grid, with the Free Spins Key the one thing it won’t substitute for. Wins with wilds can intersect or overlap on the same row or column, so two separate matches can share a single wild.
What makes this game unusual is that the wild drives the avalanche itself. When a win contains a wild, the wild explodes and takes the symbols vertically and horizontally adjacent to it along for the ride. When a win doesn’t contain a wild, a new one is created in the middle of the winning match after the symbols clear.
Wilds feed wilds, and a modest cluster can snowball. There are instances where no new wild is generated, so the loop does eventually run dry, but a single well-placed star can keep a chain alive for several evaluations.
The paying symbols, in coin values at bet level one, are:
- Ruby: 20, 100, 500 coins for three, four or five of a kind
- Acorn: 10, 50, 120 coins
- Horseshoe: 10, 40, 100 coins
- Clover: 10, 30, 80 coins
- Heart and Spade: 1, 10, 40 coins
The Ruby stands well clear of the rest, paying 500 coins for five of a kind against the Acorn’s 120. Below the Clover, the Heart and Spade are the budget end of the table, worth 40 coins at best. Those figures are coin values at bet level one, so they scale with the stake.
The Free Spins Key
Every spin starts with a Free Spins Key symbol in the bottom-left corner of the grid. It can’t disappear during the main game, and nothing can substitute for it or destroy it. As wins occur and the symbols avalanche, the key works its way along the spiral path towards the centre.
Free Spins trigger when the key reaches the central position and no more winning combinations remain, with all avalanches complete. The key only advances when wins clear space ahead of it, so the route to the bonus runs directly through the base game’s avalanche chains. A spin with no wins at all leaves the key exactly where it started.
Every win therefore has two jobs. It pays coins, and it moves the key one step closer to the middle. The two goals point in the same direction: the more the base game chains, the faster the bonus arrives.
Key Collecting and the Four Free Spins Games
Keys collected along the way fill a key meter, and the meter doesn’t reduce when a Free Spins game is chosen. Whatever you spend stays spent, and whatever you keep keeps counting. At first only one Free Spins game is available. The rest unlock in a fixed order as more Free Spins rounds are played:
- Star Bar Free Spins
- Lava Lair Free Spins
- Lucky Mug Free Spins
- Golden Pot Free Spins
Because the order is fixed, there’s no choosing your route through the early rounds. Golden Pot, the last to unlock, sits behind every game that comes before it, and the key meter you build on the way is the currency that buys each choice. Keys collected in the main game carry across rounds rather than resetting after each visit.
Lava Lair and the Sticky Wild
Lava Lair is the round that changes the wild rules. Its Sticky Wild, a gold coin stamped with a W, works as a regular wild except on one count: it can’t be destroyed, and it doesn’t destroy the symbols around it when it forms part of a win. It stays put for the duration.
In the main game a wild is always on borrowed time, exploding as part of the loop it powers. In Lava Lair, a wild that survives every cascade stays on the grid for as long as the round lasts, and every subsequent evaluation can build on it.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.9/10
Playing this feels less like spinning and more like slowly winding a music box: you’re not waiting for a scatter to drop, you’re escorting a key across a spiral, one win at a time. That’s the reason to pick it. Few slots make the bonus something you progress towards rather than something that either happens or doesn’t, and on Finn’s hand-drawn hillside the slow walk is genuinely pleasant company.
The avalanche is the best thing here. Because wilds create wilds, even a three-symbol match can escalate through two or three extra payouts, and the 22% hit rate feels busier than it sounds. The worst thing is the reward at the end of the walk: 300x is a small ceiling for a game this patient, and the best free spins rounds are locked behind repeated visits.
If you want a slot that pays its way to big wins quickly, this isn’t it. For players who like a session that builds, who enjoy watching a chain unwind and a meter fill, the rainbow at the end is smaller but the walk under it is one of the nicer ones in NetEnt’s catalogue.
Finn and the Swirly Spin FAQs
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What is the RTP of Finn and the Swirly Spin?
The RTP is 96.62%. -
How do you trigger free spins in Finn and the Swirly Spin?
Free Spins trigger when the Free Spins Key symbol, which starts in the bottom-left corner, reaches the central position of the grid and no more winning combinations remain, with all avalanches complete. -
How does the wild symbol work in Finn and the Swirly Spin?
The wild substitutes for all symbols except the Free Spins Key. Wins containing a wild make the wild explode and destroy adjacent symbols, while wins without a wild create a new wild in the middle of the match, keeping the avalanche going. -
What is the Sticky Wild in Finn and the Swirly Spin?
The Sticky Wild appears only during Lava Lair Free Spins. It works like a regular wild but can’t be destroyed and doesn’t destroy the symbols around it when it forms part of a win. -
What is the maximum win on Finn and the Swirly Spin?
The maximum win is 300x the bet. -
What is the grid size of Finn and the Swirly Spin?
It’s a 5×5 grid, with wins formed by three or more matching symbols in a horizontal or vertical line anywhere on the reels. -
In what order do the Free Spins games unlock?
The first Free Spins game is available from the start. The others unlock in a fixed order: Star Bar, then Lava Lair, then Lucky Mug, and finally Golden Pot. The key meter doesn’t reduce when a Free Spins game is chosen. -
What is the minimum and maximum bet on Finn and the Swirly Spin?
Stakes run from 0.10 to 200 per spin. -
Who makes Finn and the Swirly Spin?
It’s a NetEnt slot. Finn and the Swirly Spin’s release date is 23 November 2017.
