Grand National Keno
Of all the variety of gambling games in the world, Keno has proved one of the hardest for online casinos to make entertaining enough for the switch to online play. NetEnt have had a fair stab at it with Bonus Keno, by introducing a bonus round game to the traditional board and a minesweeper style gameplay.
Cleary though, British developer OpenBet thought they could go one better, by clever usage of a theme based around one of the biggest annual horse races in the world, the historic Aintree Grand National.
The Grand National for many British Market, is the one day of the year they will place a bet with the bookies, for some non-gamblers it is literally the only event they ever bet on, with such a theme, its clear OpenBet are heavily targeting the British market.
Is the style change enough to make this classic and traditional Chinese gambling game exciting enough for a new generation of online players?
Theme & Gameplay
There can be no doubt that the theme is the big draw of this game, Keno after all, is pretty standard across the different titles, on this one, you have the backdrop of the famous racetrack, with a board of numbers to choose from, each representing an individual horse.
You only get 40 numbers to pick from, unlike the usual 80, but each has the possibility to represent one of the eight horses in the race to the finish line. Select your eight picks, choose a stake and click go for the race to commence!
A 3D animated horses head, complete with a traditional bookies hat and cigar, will commentate faster than you can make sense of, just like the journalists on TV at the real race, as each horse crosses the line their number will be displayed on the board, hopefully matching your picks.
Only two correct picks will bring you back your original stake, three will double it, of course, what you really want is all eight as that is an astounding 1000x your bet! The bets by the way, can range from just 0.25 credits to 10.00, this isn’t a high stakes game at all considering the potential win.
Summary
This title adds some much needed fun to the basic Keno game, we love some of the crazy individual horse names that the game team has come up with that run across the board during the race. The animations are good, the graphics sharp and it feels more like a modern online scratch game than the old worn game of traditional Keno. For sure, the chances of that big eight pick win are small, but that hasn’t stopped lottery players for years on end, we don’t think it will stop old, or new Keno players either.
