Inks & Pints Slot Review
Half a pub and half a tattoo parlour, built inside a hollow autumn tree, where a shaded-up leprechaun inks a reclined redhead while amber jars glow overhead. Inks & Pints commits to its parlour harder than most games commit to anything, and it’s betting that charm is worth more than a big paytable.
That’s a real wager, because this is a modest game underneath. Peter & Sons, the studio behind Greedy Alice and Ghost Father, have built something simpler than Barbarossa Revenge DoubleMax: a 5×3 grid, one wild trick in the base game, and a free spins round whose only escalation is that the wild starts to pay. How far that carries a session is the question worth answering.
Base Game & Features
The reels sit in a bright green frame trimmed with gold knotwork, with the leprechaun’s parlour spilling out on both sides. On the left there’s a proper bar: brass taps, coloured bottles, red-topped stools and a chequered tile floor under a big round window. On the right, the tattoo chair and a wall of framed flash art crowd in behind the customer.
It’s a busy screen that never quite clutters, mostly because the artwork keeps both halves in the same warm palette of amber lamplight and deep green. The symbols follow the theme where it counts: the premiums are characters and props from the parlour, while the low end is the standard four suits drawn to match the cartoon style.
Every pay value below is a multiple of the total bet, not the line bet, so compare like with like:
- Finn Clovercoil (the leprechaun): 3x for three, 6x for four, 10x for five
- Pension Fund (a pot of gold): 2x, 4x and 8x
- Bogwater (a bottle): 1.5x, 3x and 5x
- Green card symbol: 1.5x, 3x and 5x
- Spade: 0.5x, 1x and 2x
- Heart: 0.5x, 1x and 2x
- Club: 0.5x, 1x and 2x
- Diamond: 0.5x, 1x and 2x
The top of the ladder is modest. Five Finn Clovercoils is the richest regular combination on the board, and the four suits all pay the same, so the spread from best to worst symbol is narrow by the standards of the format.
What the list shows is a compressed ladder with one clean break. The three parlour symbols sit above everything else, the two mid-tier entries are exact equals, and the suits share a single flat tier at the bottom. It’s the top step and the floor that matter, and neither is far apart.
That flat bottom half matters more than it looks. With four suits all paying the same modest amounts, a large share of the screen is carrying combinations that barely move the balance. The interesting wins all route through the three parlour symbols or the wild.
Expanding Sticky Wilds
The base game’s one mechanic belongs to its wild, and it works as a three-step sequence:
- A wild lands on the reels in the base game
- It expands to fill its entire reel and becomes sticky
- A single re-spin plays out with the expanded wild held in place
That’s the entire loop. There’s no ladder, no collector, no second stage, and the wild doesn’t pay anything itself in the base game. Its only value here is substitution, standing in for the paying symbols while it holds the reel for one extra chance to connect a win.
Because the expansion fills a full reel top to bottom, the wild is present on every row of that reel. Any symbol stack or line that crosses it can call on it, which is what makes a single held reel worth more than a single wild would be. If a second wild had already expanded elsewhere, the re-spin gives both a free chance to work together.
The wild itself is a beer jar, which fits the pub half of the parlour nicely. Its payday arrives somewhere else entirely, in the free spins round, where it takes on a second job that changes what a full screen of jars is worth.
Inks & Pints Free Spins & Bonus Features
The route into the feature is the scatter, a clover card that reads “Hit The Jar”. Three of them anywhere on the reels trigger the free spins round. The scatter doesn’t pay anything itself; its only job is to open the feature.
What you get inside is a familiar round with one sharp difference, and it’s worth spelling out what changes and what doesn’t:
- Trigger: three scatter clover cards, anywhere on the reels
- Wild behaviour: still substitutes for the paying symbols
- New pay: five wilds on a payline pay 10x the total bet
- Scatter value: none, inside the round or out
Free Spins
That new wild pay is the whole point of the round. Five beer jars on a line pay 10x the total bet, level with five Finn Clovercoils and ahead of everything else in the game. In the base game the same symbol paid nothing at all.
It’s a quiet piece of design. The wild is a helper in the base game and a top-paying symbol in the feature, so a screen full of jars means something quite different depending on which mode you’re in. There’s no multiplier, no ladder and no retrigger mechanic layered on top; the role change is the escalation.
Note the condition, though: the wild pays only when five appear on a payline, so four jars is worth nothing beyond what they substitute for. It’s an all-or-nothing row, the single hardest combination in the game to land, and the round’s biggest prize sits behind it.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 6.2/10
This is a game you play for the room you’re playing it in. A jar lands, fills its reel, holds, and the re-spin has one job. Sessions settle into that rhythm quickly, and the parlour around it, the lamplight and the flash art and the leprechaun at work, is the reason to stay.
The best thing here is the wild’s second job in free spins: the symbol you’ve been leaning on all game suddenly becomes the joint-biggest payer, and that flip is more satisfying than a generic multiplier bolted on would have been.
The paytable is the honest problem. A 10x ceiling on the best regular win is thin for a modern release, and the feature’s top prize hides behind a five-jar line that almost never arrives. Chasers of big numbers will find this one’s glass half empty. Players who love a beautifully drawn world and a feature set they can understand in a minute will feel right at home in the parlour.
Inks & Pints FAQs
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What triggers the free spins in Inks & Pints?
Three scatter symbols trigger the free spins round. The scatter is a clover card that reads “Hit The Jar”, and it can land anywhere on the reels. -
What do Expanding Sticky Wilds do in Inks & Pints?
In the base game, a wild expands to cover its whole reel and locks in place, then a single re-spin plays out with the wild held there. The wild substitutes for the paying symbols but doesn’t pay on its own in the base game. -
Does the wild symbol pay in Inks & Pints?
Only during free spins. In the base game the wild substitutes but pays nothing; during the free spins round, five wilds on a payline pay 10x the total bet, matching the game’s best combination. -
What is the highest-paying symbol in Inks & Pints?
Finn Clovercoil, the leprechaun, is the top regular symbol, paying 10x the total bet for five of a kind. During free spins the wild matches that at 10x for five on a payline. -
What is the grid size of Inks & Pints?
Inks & Pints plays on a 5×3 grid of reels and rows. -
When is Inks & Pints released?
Inks & Pints’ release date is 15 October 2026. -
Who makes Inks & Pints?
Inks & Pints is made by Peter & Sons, the studio behind titles including Greedy Alice and Ghost Father. -
Do the scatter symbols pay anything in Inks & Pints?
No. The scatter clover card exists solely to trigger the free spins round when three appear; it carries no pay value of its own, in the base game or during the feature.
