The maneki neko, the beckoning cat with one paw raised, is Japan's best-known good luck charm, and PG Soft built a whole slot around it at the end of 2020. In Lucky Neko the golden cat is more than the top symbol: every cat that lands raises the win multiplier by two. Around it sits a six-reel cascade game with a ways counter that changes every spin and framed tiles that slowly turn into wilds. I played the demo below at 36.00 a spin and checked the ways count on every screen I captured.
United States
Lucky Neko available at Cafe Casino
Same game, real money
Cafe Casino runs the same Lucky Neko with the same math and adds a welcome bonus for players from the United States:
300% up to $2,000 + 150 FS 18+ · T&Cs apply · the demo stays freeA ways counter that changes every spin
The board has six reels of five rows, plus an extra horizontal reel above reels two to five. Symbols on reels two to five can be two, three or four spaces tall, and a tall symbol counts as one when the ways are worked out. The number on the plaque at the top is simply how many symbols each reel shows, multiplied together.
The opening screen reads 10800 WAYS. Counting the top row in, the six reels show 5, 3, 6, 6, 4 and 5 symbols: reel two has a tall cat and a tall drum under one top symbol, and reel five a tall lantern, a wild and a tall fan. 5 x 3 x 6 x 6 x 4 x 5 = 10,800. Two later screens read 12000, and both add up the same way, 5 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 4 x 5 and 5 x 5 x 6 x 4 x 4 x 5.
The range in the rules follows from the same sum: 5 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 5 = 2,025 with the middle reels at their tallest, and 5 x 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 x 5 = 32,400 when every space holds its own symbol. The rules example counts 1 x 2 x 3 x 1 = 6 ways for four of a kind of the top symbol, which at 40 a way pays 240. The layout and the range are the same as in Speed Winner, which PG Soft released in 2022.
Silver, gold, wild: the frames on the tall tiles
Some tall tiles on reels two to five land with a silver frame. Wins pay from the leftmost reel, winning symbols explode and new ones cascade in, and that is when the frames matter.
A silver-framed tile that is part of a win does not disappear. After the cascade it turns into a random symbol with a gold frame, never a wild or a scatter. If the gold-framed tile wins again, it turns into a wild in the next round:
The rules illustration shows the whole chain on one tall tile: sushi rolls in silver, a lantern in gold, then a wild. Because the tile is tall, the wild it becomes covers several rows of its reel, which multiplies the ways for every symbol that reaches it. The wild itself substitutes for everything except the scatter and only lands on reels two to five. Leprechaun Riches introduced the same silver-to-gold chain a year earlier.
The cats are the multiplier
The golden cat is the top-paying symbol, 30 to 80 for three to six of a kind, but its second job matters more. On any base game spin, every cat on the reels raises the win multiplier by 2 before wins are paid. A cat does not have to be part of the win to count.
The rules illustration shows three cats, each tagged x2, making x6 for that spin. Even the opening screen shows two cats, one tall on reel two and one in the top row; on a winning spin those two would mean x4.
Free spins: the multiplier starts at x2
Four scatters anywhere award 10 free spins, and each extra scatter adds two more. The free spins use the stake that triggered them and can be retriggered. My opening board shows two scatters, on reels one and six, which is half of what is needed.
During the feature the win multiplier starts at x2, and every cat that lands adds 2 more. Because the starting value is set once for the whole feature, the rules read as a multiplier that carries from spin to spin and only grows; they mention no reset. That is what the 100,000x cap is built on: a long free spins round with a lot of cats.
What a normal spin looks like
Both wins in my screenshots paid less than the 36.00 stake. On the screen below, a round of tens, queens and jacks running through two wilds in the middle row paid 28.80, about 0.8x, with the counter at 12000 WAYS.
The screenshot catches the cascade in motion, with exploding symbols still on the board, so I will not split that total into individual ways. It does show the typical shape of a Lucky Neko win: many low symbols on many ways at once, with the wilds doing the linking.
Paytable per way
Paytable values are multiplied by bet size and level, and a spin costs 20 times that product. Dividing by 20 shows what one way is worth against the whole stake.
Six cats on a single way are 4x the stake before any multiplier, and the low symbols pay a fraction of the bet per way. The money comes from ways adding up and from the cats multiplying the total:
| Symbol | 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 of a kind | 6 of a kind vs stake, per way |
|---|---|---|
| Golden cat | 30 / 40 / 50 / 80 | 4x |
| Drum | 20 / 25 / 30 / 50 | 2.5x |
| Lantern | 10 / 25 / 30 / 40 | 2x |
| Fan | 8 / 15 / 20 / 30 | 1.5x |
| Nigiri, sushi rolls | 6 / 10 / 12 / 15 | 0.75x |
| A, K | 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 | 0.5x |
| Q, J, 10 | 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 | 0.2x |
Lucky Neko by the numbers
PG Soft's game page lists a 96.73% RTP and a 100,000x maximum win. I found no public information sheet for this game, and the studio does not publish its volatility, so I leave that out; treat the 100,000x as a ceiling rather than a realistic target. Like the other PG Soft slots with free demos on this site, it runs in a portrait column built for phones:
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Provider | PG Soft |
| Released | End of 2020 |
| Reels | 6 reels, 5 rows, extra top reel over reels 2-5 |
| Ways | 2,025 to 32,400 (base bet 20) |
| Wilds-on-the-Way | Silver frame, then gold frame, then wild on winning tiles |
| Cat multiplier | +2 per cat on the reels |
| Free spins | 10 for 4 scatters, +2 per extra scatter, multiplier starts at x2, retrigger possible |
| RTP | 96.73% |
| Max win | 100,000x |
| Bet in the demo | 0.60 to 180 per spin |
Bet: 0.60 to 180 in the demo
The demo opens at 12.00. The Bet Options panel multiplies a bet size, a bet level from 1 to 10 and the base bet of 20; my session ran at 0.30 x 6 x 20 = 36.00.
Bet sizes run from 0.03 to 0.90, so a spin costs from 0.60 (0.03 x 1 x 20) to 180.00 (0.90 x 10 x 20). Real-money limits depend on the casino and the currency.
Lucky Neko demo: FAQ
Is the Lucky Neko demo free?
How does the cat multiplier work in Lucky Neko?
How do you trigger free spins in Lucky Neko?
How many ways does Lucky Neko have?
What are the RTP and max win of Lucky Neko?
Verdict
Lucky Neko is a busy, generous-looking game with a clear centre: the cats. They pay the most, they raise the multiplier in every spin they land in, and in free spins they keep pushing it up from x2. The framed tiles and the shifting ways counter keep the base game moving between those moments, even if most spins return less than the stake. Spend a few hundred demo spins with it and count the cats; that tells you more about this slot than the 100,000x on the poster.