New Year Riches Slot Review
A starry indigo sky hangs over a city glowing orange below, all of it framed in gold art-deco steps, and Play’n GO have made that one night carry an entire slot. The judgement call here is unusual: New Year Riches spends nothing on variety and everything on a single promise, a free spins round where the multiplier climbs every spin to a guaranteed 20x. Underneath it sits a 5-reel, 20 fixed payline layout running at 96.25% RTP with mid to high volatility.
That puts it in familiar company, alongside the likes of Moon Princess, Sails of Riches and Cash Vandal, where the studio’s habit is tidy maths wrapped around one clean feature. Most seasonal slots pad the reels with extras; this one strips back to a countdown and trusts it to be enough.
The Base Game at Midnight
New Year Riches pays left to right across its 20 fixed paylines, starting from the leftmost reel. Symbol wins pay for any winning combination without gaps in it, and only the highest combination counts on each active line. When several lines land in the same round, all of them are added together.
That’s the whole engine. There’s no respin mechanic in the base game, no random modifier, nothing landing between paid spins to break up the rhythm. Wins arrive, they’re totalled, and the round ends. For a game whose excitement lives in one bonus round, that plainness is a deliberate choice rather than an accident of budget.
Symbols and the Reel Set
The symbols split cleanly in two. Famous landmarks are the high-paying icons, while the low end is made up of balloon card suits, which at least fit the party. It’s a conventional ladder with nothing exotic in the middle, and the game makes no apology for it.
The Champagne bottle is the wild, substituting for everything except the scatter. The Midnight Clock is the scatter, and it has exactly one job: three of them anywhere on the reels unlock the feature round. Neither symbol carries any secondary behaviour in the base game, so the wild is purely a line-completion tool and the scatter purely a trigger.
Wins from features, bonus rounds and scatter pays are all added to payline wins and paid out at the end of a game round, which keeps the accounting simple. Whatever the reels display when they stop is what the paytable settles, and nothing is carried forward between rounds.
Betting and Play Options
Bet sizes are set in the menu before a round starts, and the bet can’t be changed while a round is running. Free spins play out at the same bet and the same number of lines as the spin that triggered them, so what you stake going in is what the whole feature runs on.
Auto Play runs consecutive rounds automatically at the current settings and switches itself off if the balance drops too low to continue. There’s also an auto-adjust option that reduces the total bet when the balance can’t cover the chosen stake, and it only ever works downwards: it won’t climb back to the original bet after a win.
Impatient players get two speed options. Fast Play toggles on significantly faster gameplay, and holding the spin button for a second and a half activates Hyper Spin mode, which speeds the reels up immensely. Both slow back down automatically when a feature triggers, so the bonus round always plays out at full length.
New Year Free Spins
The Midnight Clock scatter is the trigger. Land three of them anywhere on the reels and the New Year Free Spins feature begins with 10 free spins. It’s the only route into the round, and the only feature the game offers.
The Climbing Multiplier
The round begins with an x2 win multiplier, which increases by 2 on every subsequent spin. That gives the feature a built-in countdown of its own, running all the way to a fixed destination:
- Spin 1 – x2 multiplier
- Spin 2 – x4 multiplier
- Spin 3 – x6 multiplier
- Spin 4 – x8 multiplier
- Spin 5 – x10 multiplier
- Spin 6 – x12 multiplier
- Spin 7 – x14 multiplier
- Spin 8 – x16 multiplier
- Spin 9 – x18 multiplier
- Spin 10 – a guaranteed x20 multiplier
That final spin is the whole point of the feature. Whatever lands on spin ten pays at 20x, so the round builds towards a fixed destination rather than depending on lucky retriggers to stay interesting. Every spin that passes raises the floor on what the next one could pay.
It also changes how the middle of the round feels. In most free spins features, spin four is just spin four; here it’s a x8 multiplier with six steps still to come, and even a modest line win is doing useful work. The multiplier applies to the win, not the bet, so the arithmetic scales cleanly as the count climbs.
The round keeps you oriented as it goes: a counter shows the free spins remaining alongside the current multiplier, so there’s never any doubt about where in the climb you are or what the next spin will be worth. It’s a small touch, but it suits a feature whose entire appeal is knowing what’s coming.
Scatter Respins
Scatters still land during free spins, and they extend the round:
- 1 scatter – awards 2 respins
- 2 scatters – awards 4 respins
- 3 scatters – awards 6 respins
Scatters don’t land during respins, so each extension is a one-off rather than the start of a chain. The multiplier keeps stepping up through them, which is where the round’s better outcomes come from: a respin batch arriving late can carry the x16 or x18 steps across extra spins before the guaranteed 20x lands.
The order of events matters here. Respins play out after the spin that collected the scatters, each one lifting the multiplier by its usual 2, and once the batch is exhausted the round resumes its normal schedule. A three-scatter landing on spin eight is the prize scenario: six extra spins wrapped around the top of the multiplier ladder.
Wins from the feature, including any scatter pays, are added to payline wins and paid out at the end of the round. The stake never changes mid-feature, so every multiplier step is applied to the same bet the trigger was placed at.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.1/10
Playing this is mostly waiting, and the game is honest about that. You spin a plain 20-line base game until three clocks land, and the reason anybody picks it over something busier is the promise waiting behind them: a round that tells you exactly where it’s going before it starts.
The guarantee is the strength, and it’s a real one. Because the tenth spin pays at 20x no matter what, the round always has a destination, and late scatter respins can stretch the best multipliers across extra spins. The weakness is everything else: there is one feature, nothing sits between you and it, and once the countdown finishes there’s nothing left to discover.
It suits players who enjoy a short, structured bonus with a fixed payoff, and it will leave anyone who wants layered mechanics or variety cold. As a slot built on a single midnight, that narrowness is close to the point – the party only ever promised one good hour, and it delivers it.
New Year Riches FAQs
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What is the RTP of New Year Riches?
New Year Riches runs at an RTP of 96.25%. -
Is New Year Riches high volatility?
The game is rated mid to high volatility, so wins can be less frequent but with more potential upside than a low-variance title. -
How many paylines does New Year Riches have?
It’s a 5-reel slot with 20 fixed paylines, paying left to right from the leftmost reel. -
How do you trigger free spins in New Year Riches?
Landing three Midnight Clock scatter symbols anywhere on the reels triggers the New Year Free Spins feature with 10 free spins. -
How does the free spins multiplier work?
The round starts with an x2 win multiplier that increases by 2 on every spin, reaching a guaranteed x20 multiplier on the 10th and final spin. -
Can free spins be extended in New Year Riches?
Yes. During free spins, 1 scatter awards 2 respins, 2 scatters award 4 respins and 3 scatters award 6 respins. Scatters don’t land during respins, so each extension happens once. -
When is New Year Riches released?
New Year Riches’ release date is 26 November 2020. -
Who makes New Year Riches?
New Year Riches is made by Play’n GO.
