Millionaire Genie is a sumptuous looking slots game filled with imagery befitting the Arabian Nights with genies, magic lamps, ancient manuscripts, bejewelled cobras, ornate keys and bags of gold coins spinning around on the reels. It is very atmospheric with music playing as the animated genie guards the jackpot and oversees the play.
There's a lot to take in with the option of autoplays, different bets and 15 paylines with the option of having up to 75 games in motion at once. To win you need to match combinations of symbols. There are wild cards, bonus spins and scatter symbols to be won, as well as a bonus game. As a novice the jargon all goes over my head, but the visuals made it all look quite straightforward and user friendly.
Rather than trying to understand it all in theory, I dived right in with my £5 credit to see what happened, hoping to get some beginner's luck, which might have allowed me to get a slice of the huge jackpot! Basically it was a case of setting my bet and hitting 'Spin'.
I used the minimum bet of 1p per line across 15 lines and set my play into motion. I really didn't get how you won, but occasionally a gold line was drawn across the screen connecting the symbols and telling me I had won anything from 3p to my highest win 55p. These amounts were added back onto my balance.
I'm obviously not a very lucky lady because I exhausted my £5.00 balance in just 9 minutes. I chose to spin manually rather than clicking autoplay which extended my playing time and I used the minimum stakes, so I made it last for as long as possible. Yet I was quickly left with just 13p in my account, which was insufficient funds for playing on. So my dalliance into online gambling was over very swiftly.
I was impressed that I wasn't allowed to play on once my balance was exhausted, and that my balance was clearly displayed at all times. Hopefully this means no-one will inadvertently run up debts or overspend. If you pay in what you are prepared to lose, and use that sum to play, without being tempted to pay in any more money, then you will know exactly where you stand. If you get lucky and win, that's a bonus that you can use for playing more games or cash in. But if you are like me, you can bow out gracefully when the money runs out.
To be very honest, I was quite shocked at how easy it is to lose money and how quickly my balance dwindled away. I'm sure there are ways to learn techniques and methods to improve your strategies and win more, and of course someone will get lucky and win the jackpot which stood at over half a million pounds during my time playing. That would be a fantastic return on a £5 bet, and you've got to be in it to win it!
I know some people find the idea of gambling with real cash exciting, and yes, there is a buzz when you see a winning line appear and the anticipation that with one more spin the jackpot could be won does get the adrenaline flowing. And being able to play 24/7 from the comfort of your own home or on the go using the app makes it a very accessible pastime for many.
But for me, my wins were minimal and my balance just kept going down - no beginner's luck for me. It was fun while it lasted, watching the animations and hoping for a winning line to appear, but it was over very quickly. The few wins I did get did not make me think it was worth investing more money into the game in the hope of making my money back or breaking even. This was a finite, one time only experience for the purpose of this review, because with my luck I couldn't afford to lose £5 every 9 minutes!
I hope if you ever play, you have better luck than I did!
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