Fruit Basket Slot Machine
Spring and summer may be fading into the distance, but games with a sunny theme can last all year round. Who can’t get a warm glow from the idea of a picnic basket in a pleasant park surrounding? One that comes with the added blanket too.
Does Fruit Basket, a 5-reel, 20-line game from PlayPearls, bring that sunshine spark with fun and worthwhile gameplay?
A Plum (And Other Fruits) Design
It may not be spectacular, but the design is cosy and fitting for a summer picnic vibe. There’s a quick image of a picnic basket on a blanket with the game’s title in big funky letters on the loading page before it moves to the main game. Once there, you’ll probably first notice the colourful lettering, made up of green, blue, purple, orange, red and yellow. As they’re the colours of the fruits within the game, it’s a nice start.
The main background image is the grass, with the blanket giving a bit of extra colour, and the basket giving a boundary to the reels. There are also the line numbers on either side, with extra detail coming with diagrams for each on the Paytable page.
The fact that the fruit icons have so little detail almost adds to their charm. They don’t look real enough to reach out and grab but their simplistic design still makes them appealing, especially as there is so much space between each symbol. The basket handles work well. The music not so much. Its short number of chords gets tedious very quickly and doesn’t give off enough of a summer vibe.
Picnic Play
As with some other PlayPearl games, you don’t choose the number of lines but what you decide to bet with. This works out how much your bet will be. It starts off at 0.1 which becomes a bet of 2.00. There are also options for 0.2, 0.3, 0.5, 1.00, 2.00 and 4.00. This adds up to a maximum bet of 80. There isn’t a maximum bet button but you can use Autoplay if you fancy having a more leisurely time. There are no settings for how many spins so it is a simple start/stop process.
On the paytable within the help button you can see the 9 regular symbols, in order from up to down, covering 3 columns. Top of the pile is the 7 symbol that is over a leaf. It’s a rather strange design and there’s no reason given for it. If you get 5 you get 30 credits, 4 gives you 10 and 3 provides 5. The rather odd blue coloured grapes are second in ranking with a maximum of 25, going down to a lemon with a maximum of 5. On the banana, strawberry and lemon ones you get 0.5 credits for 3. If you get 2 of a kind it isn’t worth anything.
The paytable is probably one of the prettiest layouts you will encounter. You can see more of the blanket that is on the edges of the main screen, with a plum, an unripe lemon and an orange slice under the main details. There’s also a little extra detail in the grass for the background image.
A Little Spring in Its Bonus Step
There isn’t a huge amount on the bonus side. The leaf symbol, which makes up part of the design of the most valuable regular icon, is for Free Spins. It doesn’t have the 7, but it is worth 40 credits, more than the rest of the others. With 4 of them giving 15 credits and 3 offering 8 credits, it is also worth more than any other symbol for the same number you get.
These same symbols have a second value. They are worth between 8, 15 and 40 depending on 3, 4 or 5. The Wildcard, a bell and leaf, replaces everything except for the bonus symbol. The light green shade for the buttons, with the yellow button for start making it stand out more, are well judged. The black background and white lettering for Place Bet, Credit, Bet and Bet Per Line means that the game doesn’t overload with summer and spring colours but matches well with what’s already there.
Fun-Filled Basket
This low-key game won’t win any awards for originality or suspense, and there is a noticeable lack of high prizes and variety of bonuses. But it has been well designed and is fun and easy to play.
