Fortune Hammer Slot Review & Free Play

Fortune Hammer: Ring the Lucky Cat and Trigger Up to 38 Free Spins

KA Gaming’s Fortune Hammer is built on Japanese symbols of luck like red lanterns, daruma dolls, koi carp, and gold ingots all under a temple roof. I say "classic" because there's not much to figure out on the five-by-four grid, only 25 paylines, symbol payouts up to 20x the bet, and up to 38 free spins.

Throughout the base game, wins came in hot, as I gathered payouts from 1x to 5.4x my bet every two to four spins. Those came from lantern and mallet connections, mostly. Interestingly, both can pay from just two matching symbols on a line, while the koi carp and gold ingots need at least three to return anything. Symbol returns run from 0.08x at the bottom up to 20x for five lanterns.

Whenever the fortune god wild, which substitutes for everything but the scatter, came into play, I knew something good was coming. When it did, I landed wins between around 5x and 10x my bet. However, the highest return settled at 25.6x my bet when lanterns stacked across the first two reels and filled the board.

What keeps bugging me across the last few KA Gaming editions I've spun on is how hard the bonus is to land. Here, the lucky cat showed up once a spin at best, and I don't even see how I'd possibly trigger free spins. This time, depending on whether you land three, four, or five of them, you can claim 18, 28, or 38 free spins.

Truth be told, when it comes to presentation, this title doesn't stand out from the rest I played from the same provider, but I don’t mind it. The upside is that the base game was very fruitful, and if I wasn't a bit bored, I could've spun for much longer. But the problem stays, I can't land a bonus round, and my sessions go up to 150 spins, which is more than enough if the grid cooperates.