Le Chef Slot Machine
Online casino games developer Magnet Gaming have served up a tasty dish in the shape of their Le Chef video slot. Based in a French kitchen, and across the restaurant in the many bonus rounds, it’s got a fun cartoon style that highlights the various antics of a friendly cook as he creates his signature dishes, washes up the plates and deals with a food critic, all while trying to get his customers served on time.
The design is quite unusual, with a wide view of the kitchen taking up the screen, complete with shelves of pots and pans, sausages hanging from the ceiling and the Chef standing in front of an opening through to the seating area. It’s within this opening that we see the 9 symbol positions, in a 3x3 grid, and players will just need to line 3 matching symbols either horizontally, vertically, or across the diagonals to win a prize, giving the game 8 paylines in total. There’s a rich menu of bonus features to savour, all based around the busy day of our hard-working Chef, plus this game comes with a couple of jackpot awards as the cherry on top of the cake.
Magnet Gaming are based in Denmark and have been building a solid reputation for developing mobile optimised slots with crisp graphics and fun gameplay. All of their games are fully licensed for reliability and fair play, and the company is part of a bigger group that also operates the Danish national lottery.
Dishing up Prizes
A click on the blackboard next to the symbols is all that’s needed to review the paytable, and it’s here that we see the 6 main ingredients that come together to hopefully fill up bankrolls. There’s a croissant, which is worth 40 coins when punters land 3 on a row, while a bowl of tomato soup is worth 60 coins, the wedge of cheese pays 100, a big slice of cake is valued at 200 and a dead chicken, waiting to be prepared for cooking, returns 400 coins. The top symbol is appropriately a lobster, which claws back prizes of 600 coins when it’s across any payline.
While standard gameplay is pretty good, Le Chef is really about the main courses of bonus rounds, and there’s several here. Each triggered by their own special symbols. In no particular order, we can be served any of the multi-stage features when the right symbols fill any line.
Multiple Bonus Rounds to Fill Players up
The Pick a Dish symbol takes you to a table filled with 14 covered dishes and the aim is to click any of them to reveal instant bonus credits, which can be gambled up to 3 times over, or collected at any point. This round can also take players to some other bonus features when they pick the right ones.
If the Bon Appetite symbol appears across a line, we are taken to the main restaurant, where a waiter is running around serving his customers, while collecting bonus points each time he gets the dishes to them. As the round progresses with rolls of a dice, more and more meals line up behind the waiter, each one having a win value attached to it, including jackpots. The jackpots are offered on a menu sheet, which also has credit awards on it, so once the jackpot dish is served, you won’t necessarily win the main prize, but something will be served up anyway.
A not-so-friendly food critic puts Chef in a spin as players need to select ingredients for him, earning prizes if he likes what’s on offer, but if enough angry-face emojis appears, the round ends. There’s 3 levels to this round, to match the 3-course meal and players will be guaranteed some bonus credits as they try to keep him on their side, while entry to the jackpot rounds comes from picking the right dishes for the critic.
The Kitchen Time round is essentially a free spins game, which can either add lots of dirty plates to the sink, collecting credits with each one, or the chef needs to sell lots of soup to earn his rewards. Either way, the bonus credits keep piling up, hopefully until the jackpot levels are reached, while it’s even possible to trigger any other side game from within this round if the relevant symbols appear across a line.
Funplay and Betting Options
Because the gameplay can take gamblers through a number of different levels, it’s certainly worth a review of the paytable before committing to real cash spins, although free Le Chef video slots have also been made available.
Bet options range from just 0.40 per spin, through to a high limit of 8.00, so it’s more of a game for casual players than high rollers. There’s an Autoplay function for anyone who wants to let it all play out without needing to click each time, although it’s a simple on/off option and you will need to keep an eye on the bankroll as it’s running.
Other Slots to get your Teeth into
There’s isn’t a huge selection in the menu of cooking-themed online casino slot machines, but we can highly recommend the Mexican Cook slot, by WorldMatch. It’s a game to spice things up as chillies, tacos and tomatoes appear across the 20 paylines. A fiery red chilli is wild, completing extra combos for players, while a cool green chilli sets off a free spins bonus game.
Mexican Cook shares a similar cartoon style and has plenty of humorous touches to the design but lacks the incredible bonus rounds and animations that Le Chef dishes up.
Cordon Bleu, or a load of Crepe?
The Le Chef video slot is overflowing with treats that players can gorge themselves on. Even the base spins can be a satisfying entrée, as it’s quite easy to land 3 matching symbols across the 8 paylines for some of the smaller coin awards. The outstanding animations contribute to the enjoyment of the game, but it’s once the bonus rounds have been triggered that the main course really begins.
Each of these rounds is quite unique, and has multiple levels, leading to further awards, the jackpots, or mini-games within them. Extra spins, side dishes and further attempts at claiming prizes can all be triggered as each bonus game plays out, although it can all be a bit overwhelming at first, simply because there is so much going on.
Keep working through this feast however, and it soon becomes clear that Le Chef likes to keep his customers coming back for more. This is an impressive entry in the Magnet Gaming casino slots range that should help to put this relatively unknown developer firmly on the map.
