Lock A Luck (All41Studios/Microgaming): Overview

Do you remember the Le Kaffee Bar slot? If so, it may be for all the wrong reasons. The truth is, Le Kaffee Bar simply wasn’t a strong game. Players with less demanding tastes might have tolerated its thin flavor, but it never worked for us. The team behind that effort is All41Studios, a partner of Microgaming. To their credit, their second title, Magic of Sahara, was an improvement, though we chose to pass on it because the gameplay felt too generic.

Lock A Luck is their third release, and whether it’s their best or their worst depends on your perspective. Experienced slot fans will likely see the concept immediately, so we’ll just say it plainly: it’s essentially a clone of NetEnt’s Twin Spin slot. There’s no nicer way to frame it. Locked reels themselves aren’t something NetEnt invented, but the overall presentation and vibe make this feel like a knockoff. Still, Lock A Luck is a medium variance game built on 5 reels, 3 rows and 243 ways to win. As with Twin Spin, there are no free spins to trigger, so everything revolves around locking reels to stack as many matching symbols as you can in a single spin. With stakes from 0.20 to €/$60 per spin, it’s available to play on all devices.

On the visual side, Lock A Luck is very bare-bones and doesn’t have the polished style or sophistication of Twin Spin. It’s the kind of look you’d expect from pirated software at some shady Curacao casino. We don’t like saying it and we’re not trying to be cruel, but it’s hard to ignore. The soundtrack follows a similar funky lounge groove as well. They did at least swap out some of the symbols, though not the highest-value ones. From lowest to highest, you’ll see 9 to A royals, then charries, clovers, horseshoes, lucky sevens, and diamonds. Diamonds are the premium symbol, paying 50 times your stake for five of a kind.

Lock A Luck (All41Studios/Microgaming): Features

When it comes to bonus content, there isn’t much going on. In fact, everything hinges on a single mechanic: the Locked Reels feature. It applies to every spin, with two random adjacent reels locking together and showing identical symbols.

Those locked reels can then spread by locking additional neighboring reels, which is where the bigger wins come from. You can even end up with all five reels locked, which can produce a maximum payout of 1,333 times your stake (you can’t land a full screen of diamonds). And that, in a nutshell, is the entire feature set.

Lock A Luck (All41Studios/Microgaming): Verdict

There isn’t a great deal more to add about Lock A Luck. NetEnt is probably not thrilled to see something like this, but there may not be much they can do, since it uses its own mathematical model and appears to have carefully avoided any infringement problems. That said, we’re not specialists in that area.

So, is Lock A Luck worth your time? Yes, it can be. If you liked Twin Spin, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy this as well. It may look a bit plain, but from a gameplay standpoint it’s not really worse (or better) than Twin Spin. The smartest move is to try it and make up your own mind. If it were up to us, though, we’d stick with the original because it looks far better and feels much more attractive in every respect. Then again, maybe that’s just us being superficial.