Red Tiger’s Genie Nights is one of those shameless rip-offs that makes you question the studio’s decision to release it at all. The Honolulu Nights prototype slot, which may have been scrapped, had a peculiar blend of pixelated human flesh, poor potential, and low thrills. There was no amount of jiggling in a bikini that could have saved it. For some reason, a new game called Genie Nights has been made in the manner of Arabian Nights, and it uses the arithmetic and features from the old game Honolulu Nights. There are three ‘babes’ and everything else that made Honolulu Nights great, so you don’t have to worry that Red Tiger has taken away the flesh.
Genie Nights, like its predecessor, is littered with sand, however this time it comes courtesy of the desert setting rather than the Hawaiian shores. Camel riders cross a desert landscape of scorching sand in the background of a 3×3 game grid. The visual quality isn’t as excellent as we’ve come to expect from Red Tiger, and the overall experience feels incomplete. There is an overall sense of ‘well it’s good enough’ that suggests the creator wasn’t aiming for perfection. The initial impression is hurried, which is another way of saying it.
Genie Nights has a return to player value of 95.76% and is statistically a moderately volatile game (rated 4/5). It has a surprising number of features for how simple it seems. There are 5 fixed paylines in the main game, and players may win with any combination of 3 identical symbols, but the features increase in difficulty as they proceed. You may play on any device, with bets ranging from 10 cents to £/€100 each spin before you even dig for the answers.
In place of the masks and beach gear of Honolulu Nights, this slot machine only features low-paying 10-A card symbols and four high-paying treasure symbols. Payouts range from 0.2x the bet for the lows to 1.4x the stake for the premiums, should you get all three. Genie Nights doesn’t have a wild symbol, but it does have a lot of moving parts.
Slot Functions in Genie Nights
The same set of features is available in Red Tiger, however they go by different names. Here, punters may take advantage of Nudge mechanics, re-spins, a Magic Lamp Bonus, Wish spins of varying intensities, Great Wish spins, and Mega Wish spins.
Three Respins symbols on an active payline award 0.2 times the wager and initiate a respin. You can get up to four consecutive Respins, each of which increases your odds of winning more Respins or the Wish bonus. Only Respin, Wish, or Great Wish symbols occur on the fourth Respin.
In the main game alone, the Magic Lamp Bonus is activated if a lamp symbol of size 3×3 appears. Here, players can win one of three Wish Bonuses or a bonus between five and fifty times their initial wager.
If you get three Wish symbols in a row, you’ll win the Wish feature or the Magic Lamp Bonus. A total of eight free games are awarded, with the possibility of retriggering eight more if Wish or Great Wish symbols appear on the final game of the feature.
Great Wish – Awarded either as part of the Magic Lamp Bonus or for a successful line of three Great Wish symbols. Once again, you’ll receive 8 free spins with a boosted chance of winning. Great Wish symbols can retrigger 8 more free games on the last spin.
Mega Wish – This is an upgrade that can occur at random on the final spin of a Wish bonus, or it can be won via the Magic Lamp Bonus. All regular icons are swapped out for Genie icons worth 2, 4, or 6 times the wager during this feature. As long as the current round is producing winners, it will continue. After a losing spin, the game reverts to its prior state. In other words, if you get Mega Wish while receiving the Wish or Great Wish bonus, you will revert back to that.
If a win was not produced on the previous spin during the Wish bonus, the reels may be “nudged” to ensure a win on the next spin.
The Final Say on Genie Nights Slots
Genie Nights is an unusual game in that it can make winning feel like a chore. The bonus rounds in this game, like those in the other beach game, seem to become trapped in an infinite cycle, moving from one to the next and back again, forth and back, and yet continuing to clock over. To the point that you may find yourself wishing they’d give up so you may go on with your life. Genie Nights’ rewards are quite terrible, so the effort/reward ratio can feel out of wack, but it wouldn’t be so awful if time spent in these feature loops resulted in a similar amount of stuff.
The Mega Wish reward is another good instance of this. Due to the low returns (2–6x the wager each spin at most), prolonged play is not appealing. Even after what turned out to be a period of endless bonus rounds and unbroken victories, the game didn’t feel very exciting the first time we sat down to play. The maximum reward is 998 times the wager, which is hard to turn down. Thinking about how many Wish retriggers you’d have to go through ruins the mental image of earning that amount.