Van Gogh Slot Review
Although he had a tragic life, selling just one painting to his landlady, and dying in poverty, Vincent Van Gogh is now among the most famous artists to have ever lived.
The Van Gogh video slot is one of the first games from start-up studio Sthlm Gaming. Don’t ask us how it’s pronounced, but simply enjoy the fact that they have decided to launch their online slots portfolio with such an outstanding game.
Although it’s a fairly standard layout, with 20 paylines cross five reels where players need three or more of the same symbol across a line to win a prize, the quality of the symbols and some genuinely unique bonus features make this online slot come to life.
For our Van Gogh slot review, our team grabbed their virtual brushes and colored in the details on how the Van Gogh video slots works. Read on to find out what this artistic slot game has to offer.
Swedish Masterpiece on All Your Devices
Founded in 2016, Sthlm Gaming. Or STHLMGAMING as they like to put it, released their first slot machine at the end of 2017 and are planning to launch four or five each year. They are based in Stockholm, Sweden, which is where their name comes from.
Stockholm is something of a centre for online casino developers to reside and the team behind the company have all got many years of experience in the business. While researching the game for this Van Gogh slot review, our experts discovered that Sthlm Gamin’s titles are all coded to work on desktop PCs as well as on Android, Windows and Apple mobiles and tablets in a system they call Smart All Devices. This means that you can run this slot game on mobile at home or on the go.
A Wild and Winning Imagination
Apologies to Van Gogh devotees, but we couldn’t identify some of the paintings featured in this game, so perhaps they are inspired by his works, rather than taken directly from them.
The backdrop is of rolling fields under a stormy sky that’s very similar to “Wheatfield With Crows”, while the reels are designed to look as if they are on a canvas in the artist’s room. It’s an excellent way to lay out the game and the symbols are just as well designed, with even the J, Q, K and A icons looking like painted letters.
Wins from these vary from 10x, 20x and 50x the line stake when either the J or Q land on three, our, or all five reels of a payline, to 20x, 40x and 100x for the K or A in the same patterns. Paintings of pears, oranges and apples each return higher prizes. The top symbols are Irises, with 80x, 200x, or 800x the line bet paid, and the famous “Sunflowers”, that’s valued at 100x, 250x and 1,000x the amount wagered per line.
Vincent Van Gogh did many self-portraits, but perhaps his most famous is the one against a blue background which is used as the wild symbol. This picture will substitute for others to complete additional winning combinations. To make it easier, it can be painted in patterns to fill several adjacent spots on the reels at a time. You can see 1x2, 2x1, 2x2, or 3x3 blocks of the wild symbol at random times, although it isn’t actually worth anything on its own and can’t replace the bonus symbol.
A Splash of Genius
The artist’s paint palette is seen to the left of the reels and it’s not just there for decoration, as spots of color can appear at random next to any symbol in any spin. These purple, orange, green, or blue spots are the Colour Splash feature and get moved across to the palette whenever they appear.
Each will add a feature that will be carried over to any free spins games, with the purple splash adding one free spin. If you collect 11 purple splashes, you earn 15 free games. The orange adds one extra multiplier to free spins wins, and six splashes will see wins multiplied by seven times in the free spins.
Greens will add extra wild symbols and you can earn up to five more wilds across different reels. Each blue splash will remove a lower value playing card symbol from the mix during the free games, but during our review of the Van Gogh slot we realized that you’ll have to wait for any three or more bonus symbols to land before you reap the rewards of the Colour Splash feature.
Van Gogh Free Spins
Alternatively, the free spins will trigger once you have collected all the Colour Splash features, but while we were compiling our review of the Van Gogh slot, we found it’s more common to start the round when any three or more bonus symbols stop in any place at once.
The number of spins and all collected features will play out and while it isn’t possible to retrigger this round, with extra wilds, multipliers and fewer symbols in play, it can be an outstanding bonus with lots of high-paying spins.
Betting Options
During our review of the Van Gogh slot we were also pleased to see that very simple plus and minus buttons are used to adjust your wagers, which range from a low limit of just 0.10 per spin right up to the maximum bet of 100.00. You can activate between 10 and 500 auto-spins and set them to stop if your bankroll is increased or decreased by certain amounts.
A fast-forward button speeds up the gameplay, so you can simply watch the works of art fly by at high speed without having to do anything yourself.
More Slots to Admire
This isn’t the first slot machine themed around the works of a famous artist. The Rembrandt Riches slot from High 5 Games sees the Dutch painter and some of his best-known portraits over five reels and 20 paylines.
You can claim up to 15 free spins, which can be retriggered over and over, but the highlight is the Tumbling Reels feature. Any symbols in a winning combination vanish to leave empty spaces for the ones above to drop into. This can lead to new wins being formed, which repeats the process.
No review of artists would be complete without a mention of Leonardo Da Vinci. He’s actually got several games based around him and his work, but our favourite is probably Genius of Leonardo, from EGT. Playing card symbols, some of his most famous inventions, and the Vitruvian Man, who acts as a wildcard are all seen, along with the Mona Lisa, who triggers up to 50 free spins.
Painting by Numbers?
Land a big win and you’ll be treated to the Starry Night painting spreading across the game, with the stars glowing in a slightly surreal way. While testing the game for the Van Gogh slot review, we felt that it was yet another clever addition to how this video slot works. This is an exceptional game that anyone who appreciates the works of this troubled genius will enjoy, as will players who enjoy a well-designed online slot game while triggering unique bonus features.
Like all works of art, personal preference is important, but our favourite thing about the way this game works is the Colour Splash collection. This masterpiece of gameplay turns the free spins into a highly rewarding bonus round.
Although Sthlmg Gaming is a relative newcomer to the online slots scene, if their planned future releases are as good as this game, we’re sure to be hearing a lot more about them.
Check out the free Van Gogh video slot on this page to get an idea of how it works and then play for real cash awards at any on of our recommended and safe online casinos.
