Serenity Pokie Machine
Peace and tranquillity are the themes of this pokie, with calming images from the Orient displayed across its 5 reel, whilea beautifully presented backdrop of a Japanese garden complete with a bridge and temple sets them off nicely. If players are not drifting off to a peaceful sleep by the appearance, they will find a rewarding game that comes with a couple of bonus features like free spins, multipliers and a Pick A Lantern round that can pay out to 500x the line bet.
Developed by Microgaming, Serenity is certainly a visual treat, with high quality images throughout. To add to the stylish appearance the symbols seem to float above the background image for an impressive 3D effect, while peaceful music tinkles away to complete the overall ambience.
Playing Serenity
While this may be a tranquil game in appearance, it’s anything but boring, as players will hopefully find out for themselves as they spin up winning combinations and bonuses.
The symbols are not the only things that seem to pop out from the background, as also floating above the garden is the game title, while to each side of the reels are the payline indicators which outline where each of the 15 lines runs across them from left to right. Wins are made up whenever 3 or more identical symbols come to a rest across any active line on adjacent reels, apart from scatter wins which are created in any positions.
Players can activate any number of lines, although they won’t win anything from symbols that stop on in-active ones, while the amount staked on each can be from as little as 0.01 to as much as 5.00. This gives a bet range of 0.01 to 75.00, with just 0.15 needed to activate all lines.
An Autoplay option lets the reels spin for a set number of times, stopping at the end, or when pre-determined win or loss levels are reached, which is ideal for players who want to have a snooze.
Lower value prizes come from landing the traditional playing card symbols 10, J, Q, K and A, each of which has a little nod to the theme by having items like fans, dragons and cymbals attached to them.
Bigger rewards come from the blue, orange and red lantern symbols, but the real treats are waiting when the bonus symbols appear.
Serenity
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Serene Bonuses
The one that’s likely to turn up the most often is a wild symbol, and only 2 examples need to land in the right places to make up a win, while the biggest payouts of the base game come from landing 5 in a line. It will also help to make up extra winning lines by acting as any other main symbol.
There’s an ornate scatter symbol that pays out multiples of the total bet when at least 2 examples land on the reels and as is common practice, it also acts as the trigger for a free spins game when 3, 4 or 5 appear at once.
Although only 10 spins will play out, any winnings throughout them will be tripled in value, while landing 3 or more scatters will re-trigger the round, with a further 10 spins added on to the end of any still left to run.
The Lantern Bonus starts when 3 or more bonus symbols appear, and again it’s a scatter so they can be in any positions. This round takes place on a second screen where players are presented with 12 lanterns, from which they pick 3 of them for a quick cash payout.
The amount that can potentially be won depends on how many symbols triggered the round, with 3 of them equalling a prize from 36x to 300x the line bet, if 4 landed, then players get between 48x and 400x and should 5 bonus symbols start the game, then it’s worth between 60x and 500x the amount staked per line.
The Verdict
Serenity certainly looks impressive and with that pleasant background image and floating symbols, it’s actually one of the better-looking pokies around. The bonus features are pretty good as well, with some nice win multipliers possible in the free spins round, although the reels are standard, so there’s no guarantee that players will actually get anything before the 10 spins have played out.
The pick a lantern game however, is sure to be worth something, even if it’s not the maximum possible payouts.