Feng Fu Slot Machine
Discovering inner peace isn’t something that you can do overnight, it’s a long journey into finding yourself and learning to accept what life throws at you. Coming to terms with the cruelty that we can face isn’t easy, but we can always take our cues from more enlightened sources, and no, we don’t mean religion. Feng Fu will allow you to explore the depths of yourself while bringing in some money, and there’s no need to pray to gods or convert to a cult.
Whether you believe in the stereotypes of each culture or not, nobody can deny that the Chinese seem to have a serenity about them that few of us can obtain. Take their traditional gardens - they manage to soothe us more than any bath, candle lighting or retail therapy can. As these places are filled with untold magic, imagined or otherwise, it makes sense for Feng Fu to decorate their reels to look like one of these sumptuous oases.
Inhale… exhale...
The red painted with gold trimmings gazebo has been positioned against a background that looks like its been hand drawn, much like the traditional illustrations found in Chinese heritage. This decision to mute the colours makes the whole title more peaceful, which matches perfectly the atmosphere that Tom Horn is trying to create.
Even more fittingly, there’s no annoying music throughout the majority of the game, with only a small tune heard upon creating a winning combination. What we love most about this is that it sounds like a fortune cookie being broken in half.
Moving from the background to the fore, we’ll take a look at the delicate stylings of the symbols themselves; they’ve all been designed to add depth and texture to the game, even the low ranking icons. You can tell the difference between the two sets because the higher valued ones have been coated in gold and moulded into more intricate shapes; they tell more of a story.
Praying for Money
The number 13 may be unlucky for a lot of western players, but for those with Chinese origins, the number is imbued with good luck. Hence it playing an important part in the structure of the slot machine.
Although every one of the tiles will give a minimum of x5 credits or over, it’s the top tier that brings home the most bacon, with the golden kio starting off at a humble x25 and finishing at x200. That’s impressive in and off itself, but it’s not the most rewarding symbol you can uncover, for that rank belongs to the wild icon; it can gift you x1,000 coins for five of them. Not to mention it will remove most of the other tiles.
Expand and Spin
Even though there’s no bonus round per say, there’s free spins and with them comes a series of expanding wilds. The Yin and Yang icon needs groupings of three, four or five to get the bundle of 10 rounds, with the added bonus of a multiplier being included. Oh, and you can retrigger the free spins over and over.
The spins would be good but average on their own, a fact that Tom Horn was aware of, which is why they’ve included expanding wilds. It’s limited to 3 of the 5-reels, but its winning lines will always be multiplied by at least x2, though this can increase to x8 the more lines you make.
How to Bet
Feng Fu has 9 winlines that can be changed, and a starting bet of 0.05 that can be increased up to 2 coins, meaning that the overall amount you can play with is between 0.45 and €18. While a lot of you will automatically think to up your bet to get a better payout, this is one of the few games from the brand that doesn’t apply that rule, and so bet however you like.
Should you ever get stuck halfway through, the payout toggle will open up a new window and run you through each of the symbols and all the features, as well as showing you where each of the winlines fall.
Little Innovation
On the surface Feng Fu has a lot of potential and appears to be a good game, but crack its outer shell and delve a little deeper and you see that it’s nothing more than every other Tom Horn title. There’s no innovative or uniqueness. Keeping all that in mind, you need to decide what you value most: something familiar, that’s easy and can become boring fast, or something challenging yet new. Only then will you know whether Feng Fu is for you.
