Matsuri takes you to Japan to experience a traditional festival with fireworks, snacks, and cash prizes of up to 3,000x your bet! Our Matsuri review has all the details you need on this charming slot, including the bonus features and gameplay basics. Play’n GO released Matsuri in March 2017, and it still looks fantastic several years on. It’s highly volatile, and uses a 5x3 grid with 25 paylines. You can trigger a Free Spins feature with expanding Wild symbols, and there’s the fun Kingyo Sukui bonus game to unlock, too!
Matsuri is a 5x3 slot with 25 fixed paylines. Prizes are awarded for three or more matching symbols on paylines. Payouts depend on the symbol type and how many of them form a winning combo. Special symbols, including the Wild and Scatter, can land on any spin, too.
You can wager between £0.25 and £100.00 on each spin in Matsuri, and the slot game has an above-average RTP of 96.17%. That means the theoretical return on a £100.00 wager is £96.17, but your returns could be higher or lower than that.
Matsuri is highly volatile: payouts were typically frequent in my experience, and I landed a win once every few spins on average. But most of my wins were tiny, much less than £1.00 in many cases. At 3,000x your stake, Matsuri’s biggest payout is fairly small for a high-volatility slot.
Like most Play’n GO slots, Matsuri is available at lots of online casinos catering to UK players. Which slot sites are the best? Here are our top picks:
Matsuri revolves around an exciting Japanese festival with fireworks, delicious snacks, and colourful masks. The background scene features a spectacular view of a lake and mountains beyond, silhouetted against the evening sky. Multicoloured lights along the bottom of the base of the mountains add more colour to the scene, too.
While you play, fireworks explode across the sky, and you’ll hear the sounds of the festival (including voices and distant music) between spins. But when the reels start rolling, a dramatic drumbeat kicks in.
Matsuri has 11 symbols: 8 standard symbols, a Wild, a Scatter, and Bonus Goldfish symbols. Standard symbols include three young women dressed in traditional Japanese gowns, takoyaki, dango dumplings, kakigori, a fan, and flowers.
The Paper Lantern is the top-paying symbol, worth 40x your bet for 5. This is also the Wild.
Dango
3 — 0.12x bet / 4 — 0.40x bet / 5 — 2x bet
Kakigori
3 — 0.12x bet / 4 — 0.40x bet / 5 — 2x bet
Takoyaki
3 — 0.20x bet / 4 — 0.60x bet / 5 — 3x bet
Fan
3 — 0.20x bet / 4 — 0.60x bet / 5 — 3x bet
Flowers
3 — 0.28x bet / 4 — 0.80x bet / 5 — 4x bet
Pink Girl
3 — 0.40x bet / 4 — 2x bet / 5 — 10x bet
Green Girl
3 — 0.48x bet / 4 — 2.40x bet / 5 — 12x bet
Blue Girl
3 — 0.60x bet / 4 — 3x bet / 5 — 14x bet
Paper Lantern (Wild)
3 — 1x bet / 4 — 4x bet / 5 — 40x bet
Matsuri is optimised for mobile and desktop. If you want to play on a smartphone or tablet, Matsuri offers the same smooth, user-friendly gaming experience on smaller screens as it does on a computer. The graphics are still fantastic on mobile, the bonuses work in the same way, and the controls make it easy to play.
In the Matsuri base game, you can trigger two bonus rounds: the Free Spins feature and the Kingyo Sukui fish-scooping bonus.
Matsuri’s Wild symbol substitutes for every other symbol (except the Scatter) to award wins. It also expands during the Free Spins feature.
The Festival Mask symbol is the Scatter. It can trigger the Free Spins feature.
The Goldfish symbol can trigger the Kingyo Sukui bonus game.
Match three Festival Mask Scatters anywhere to win eight free spins. Each Scatter that appears during the feature awards two more free spins, and you can retrigger the bonus to win up to 20 free spins in total.
But that’s not all: any Wild symbol that lands during the feature will become an expanded Wild Lamp Banner that fills an entire reel. It stays in place and moves to the left of the reels gradually, taking one step per spin. This substitutes for all symbols except the Scatter.
Land three Goldfish symbols on the reels to play the Kingyo Sukui bonus game. This offers a quick change from the slot gameplay.
The feature starts with five goldfish swimming in a small tank. Click on any of them to gently scoop one out with a paper spoon. Each one that you collect has a specific prize value, but the spoon can break at any time. When it does, the round ends.
Matsuri is a stunning Asian-themed slot with a fun theme and a good set of bonus features. The background scene, symbols, and music are all beautifully designed.
The Free Spins feature can be retriggered multiple times, and the expanding Wild symbols increases your chances of winning as it moves across the reels. The Kingyo Sukui game is a fun bonus, too, and offers a brief change from spinning the reels.
However, the prizes in Matsuri are small, with the top-paying symbol worth just 40x your stake for 5. And the max win is pretty low for a high-volatility slot at only 3,000x your bet.
Ultimately, though, Matsuri is a well-crafted slot with an above-average RTP and solid bonuses to enjoy.
Rating: 8.0
We’ll answer five of the most popular questions about Matsuri below: