Giddy Up

Giddy Up Slot Review

Grandstands packed with tiny spectators, red-and-white feather banners flanking the reels, a bright sky over a grassy infield: Giddy Up is a day at the races drawn in cheerful cartoon, right down to the painted track edging at the corners. What the friendly artwork doesn’t prepare you for is a bonus round that actually asks you a question, because landing three scatters hands you a real choice between two different features rather than one fixed free-spins route. Eyecon don’t usually build that way, and titles like Fluffy Favourites, Enchanted Prince and Shaman’s Dream each run a single bonus path, which makes this two-route build stand out in the stable.

The numbers underneath are straightforward. It’s a 5×4 grid with 20 paylines, an RTP of 93.502%, and a top prize of 10,000x the total wager. That return is on the low side by modern standards, and it colours everything else the game does.

The Racecourse Reels

Wins pay left to right across the 20 fixed paylines, with line wins multiplied by the wager per payline. Only the highest combination counts on each line, and wins on different lines are added together. There’s no wild symbol in this one; the Bonus scatter is the only special symbol on the grid, and three or more of it open the feature.

The paytable is horse-first. Four different steeds take the top four spots, with the royals filling out the lower rungs. All values are multiples of the total bet:

• Red Horse: 150x for three, 250x for four, 5,000x for five
• Grey/White Horse: 20x for two, 100x for three, 200x for four, 2,500x for five
• Brown Horse: 10x for two, 75x for three, 150x for four, 1,000x for five
• Black Horse: 60x for three, 100x for four, 750x for five
• A: 50x for three, 75x for four, 200x for five
• K: 40x for three, 60x for four, 125x for five
• Q: 35x for three, 55x for four, 75x for five
• J: 30x for three, 40x for four, 50x for five
• 10: 25x for three, 30x for four, 40x for five
• 9: 20x for three, 25x for four, 30x for five

It’s a sharply tiered table. The four horses dominate the top end, two of them paying from as little as two matching symbols, while the royals exist mostly to keep the balance ticking between feature triggers. Only the steeds are worth chasing.

Cascades

Every winning spin sets off a cascade. All symbols involved in line wins move off screen to the right, and replacements drop down from above to fill the gaps. If the new arrangement produces another line win, the cascade runs again, and it keeps running until no more line wins land.

It’s a chain-reaction setup that turns a single spin into a potential sequence of payouts, and it matters well beyond the base game. The multiplier ladder inside the free games is driven entirely by how far a cascade chain runs, and the feature trigger itself only fires once the cascades on a spin have finished.

Everything in Giddy Up routes through this one mechanic, so it’s worth understanding before the bonus sections. A single spin with three connected wins plays like three spins, with the later wins arriving on an already-cleared board.

Feature Selector

Once the cascades have finished on a base game spin, three or more scattered Bonus symbols trigger the Feature Selector. This is where the game hands you the reins: you choose between a batch of free games or the Prize Ladder, and the number of triggering scatters changes what’s on offer.

• 3 Bonus symbols: 15 Free Games, or the Prize Ladder
• 4 Bonus symbols: 20 Free Games, or the Prize Ladder with prizes x2
• 5 Bonus symbols: 25 Free Games, or the Prize Ladder with prizes x5

The choice is a real one. Free Games offer volume, a climbing multiplier and retriggers; the ladder offers a shot at a large single prize with a guaranteed floor.

More scatters improve both paths, either through extra spins or doubled and quintupled ladder prizes. A five-scatter trigger is the one every player wants, and it’s the only route to the ladder’s juiciest math.

Prize Ladder Feature

The Prize Ladder is a pick game played across 12 levels. At each level you select one of three horses, and the choice either awards a prize or advances you to the next level. The feature ends the moment a prize is awarded, so every pick carries the tension of whether to hope for another step up.

How far up the ladder you start climbing depends on how you got there. The minimum prizes are set by your trigger:

• 3 Bonus symbols: minimum prize 5x the total wager
• 4 Bonus symbols: minimum prize 10x the total wager
• 5 Bonus symbols: minimum prize 25x the total wager

Whatever the trigger, the ceiling is the same: climb far enough and the ladder tops out at the game’s maximum prize of 10,000 times the total wager. The x2 and x5 multipliers from four and five scatters apply to the prizes along the way, which makes the five-scatter ladder the most lucrative version of the round.

Because the round ends on the first prize awarded, the ladder is a game of pushing your luck one level at a time. Each step up is a fresh three-way choice, and the prizes grow as the levels count down.

Free Games

The Free Games option awards 15, 20 or 25 spins depending on your trigger, played on the same paylines and wager as the triggering spin. The round’s teeth come from a cascade multiplier that climbs with every chain reaction.

The multiplier resets to x1 at the start of each free game and steps up after each cascade in a fixed order:

• x1, then x2, x3, x5, x10, x15 and finally x20

The multiplier applies to line wins only, never to scatter wins, so a cascade run of five or more steps is where the round starts paying seriously. Retriggers work the same way as the original trigger: once the cascades finish on a free game, three, four or five Bonus symbols award another 15, 20 or 25 spins.

Free Games can be retriggered up to 15 times, so a good round can run very long indeed. Add the climbing multiplier on top and the ceiling climbs with it.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.1/10

This is a game you play for the fork in the road. Between the cartoon grandstands, most of your time is ordinary spin-and-cascade stuff, waiting on scatters, and the reason to sit through that is the moment three of them land and the choice actually appears: a long multiplier climb or a short, nervy ladder walk. Both routes reward you differently, and that decision is genuinely yours to make, which is rarer than it should be at this end of the market.

The strength is that both halves of the bonus hold up. The ladder has a guaranteed floor and a 10,000x ceiling, and the free games can retrigger fifteen times over with multipliers climbing to x20. The weakness is the return, which sits below most modern releases, and the cascade-heavy base game means plenty of small reshuffles between anything memorable.

It suits players who like picking their own path through a bonus and who’ll take a thinner overall return as the price of admission. Anyone chasing top-end maths per spin will want a pricier paddock, but for a cheerful afternoon at the cartoon racecourse, this one runs a fair race.

Giddy Up FAQs

• What is the RTP of Giddy Up?

  The RTP of Giddy Up is 93.502%.
• How many paylines does Giddy Up have?

  Giddy Up has 20 fixed paylines. Line wins pay left to right, and only the highest combination counts on each line.
• What is the grid size of Giddy Up?

  Giddy Up is played on a 5×4 grid of reels and rows.
• When is Giddy Up released?

  Giddy Up’s release date is 23 June 2023.
• Who makes Giddy Up?

  Giddy Up is made by Eyecon.
• What is the maximum win on Giddy Up?

  The maximum win on Giddy Up is 10,000x the total wager.
• How does the Feature Selector work in Giddy Up?

  When three or more scattered Bonus symbols land after a base game spin’s cascades finish, you choose between two features: Free Games (15, 20 or 25 spins depending on the scatter count) or the Prize Ladder, with ladder prizes multiplied x2 or x5 for four or five scatters respectively.
• Can Free Games be retriggered in Giddy Up?

  Yes. Once the cascades finish on a free game, three, four or five Bonus symbols award another 15, 20 or 25 Free Games. The round can be retriggered a maximum of 15 times.