5 Clans

5 Clans Slot Review

Smoke drifts over a highland valley, snow caps the far peaks, and five warbands stare each other down across a gilded frame set with red gemstones. Somewhere beyond the ridge, something is burning. Set against that painted battlefield, Reflex Gaming‘s 5 Clans makes a quietly bold argument: that a plain five-reel grid with ten paylines can out-variety games built on a hundred times the ways, because everything this game has happens inside the spin you’re already watching.

It runs on a 5×3 grid with 10 fixed paylines, at 96.0% RTP and high volatility. The studio’s name sits alongside Hell’s Hogs and Thor’s Hammer Time Thunder Zone on the same shelf, and 5 Clans is the more disciplined of the family. Five armies, one valley, and only one paytable to fight over.

The Base Game and Its Five Shields

Wins pay left to right across the 10 lines, with three or more identical symbols needed from the leftmost reel, and two suffice for the top symbol. All line wins are multiples of the total stake, and coinciding wins on different lines add together. Simple enough.

What stops that structure from being a flat grind is the shields. Five of them, one per clan, and each colour does something different the moment it lands in view. Two of them reshape the reels outright, one stacks the board, one multiplies the win, and one opens the bonus round.

Symbols and Pays

Five clan characters fill the top of the paytable, with suit-styled card symbols below them. The orange king leads the field by a wide margin; the rest of the characters bunch together, and the suits trail. Values are multiples of the total bet:

• Orange king with crown – x4, x8, x75 for three, four, five
• Red-bordered bearded swordsman – x2, x6, x15
• Teal-bordered blonde woman – x2, x4, x10
• Purple armoured figure – x2, x4, x8
• Teal-bordered dark-haired woman – x2, x4, x6
• Red diamond, blue spade, purple heart – x0.5, x1, x3
• Green club – x0.5, x3 (four and five only)

The drop after the king is steep: five kings pays 75x the total bet, but five of any other character pays between 6x and 15x. That gap between the top symbol and the rest is doing a lot of work in a high volatility game.

The wild is a red card marked WILD, and it substitutes for everything except the bonus symbols. That’s its whole job, and it does it on every reel.

The Five Shield Reel Bonuses

Each shield has its own effect, and the list is worth reading in full because the differences between them are the whole game:

• Red Shield – awards a Super Wild and a free respin, and the respin can build up to four Super Wilds in total
• Green Shield – awards a Wild and a free respin, with up to 13 Wilds possible
• Purple Shield – awards a character symbol and a free respin, up to 15 character symbols in total
• Blue Shield – attaches a multiplier to any win on the spin, running as high as 50x
• Gold Shield – appears only on reel 5 and triggers the Free Spins feature

The green shield is the volume play. Thirteen wilds across a five-reel grid with only 10 paylines means most lines end up completed by something, and the respin is free, so the shield is pure upside on the spin it lands.

The purple shield is the quieter cousin with the bigger ceiling. Fifteen matching characters spread across a 5×3 grid is close to a board full of the same symbol, and that’s the kind of respin that clears the paytable in one go. It won’t choose the king every time, but when it does, the five-of-a-kind pays stack up fast.

The blue shield works differently from the other four: it doesn’t reshuffle anything, it just multiplies. It can be randomly activated by any reel win, and the multiplier attached to that win runs as high as 50x. On a respin that’s already loaded with wilds or stacked characters, that’s where the paytable’s small numbers stop looking small.

The gold shield, meanwhile, only ever appears on reel 5, and it has one job in the base game: starting the free spins round. In a game this shield-heavy, that’s the quiet one of the five.

Free Spins: The Final Battle

A single Gold Shield in view on reel 5 starts the feature, and nine free spins come with it. The spins run at the lines and bet of the triggering spin, so there’s nothing to configure and nothing to lose.

The difference inside the feature is frequency: the reel bonus shields become more active, so red, green, purple and blue shields land more often around the free spins themselves. All five shields can trigger during the round.

That’s the whole design of the bonus. It isn’t a separate game with its own rules; it’s the same five shields, running hotter, for nine spins at a time. The best case is a chain of them: a purple respin stacking characters, a blue multiplier landing on the result, and a gold shield extending the round while it’s still paying.

Retriggers are straightforward. A Gold Shield landing in view on reel 5 during the feature awards three extra free spins, and there’s no stated cap on how many times that can happen.

Buy A Bonus

A Buy A Bonus button sits in the interface, and it does exactly what it says: skips the wait for reel 5 to cooperate and drops you straight into the free spins round, with all five shields running at their higher feature frequency from the first spin.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.7/10

Playing 5 Clans is less a wait for a bonus than a watch on a battlefield where any spin can turn: a shield lands, a respin fires, and the board you were looking at a moment ago is a different one. The free spins round is the same fight with the shields running hotter, and that consistency is the reason to choose it – one game, turned up, rather than two.

Its strength is what happens when the shields cooperate. A purple respin stacking fifteen characters under a blue multiplier of up to 50x can pay like a far larger game than ten lines suggests. The weakness is the paytable beneath all that: five kings pays 75x the bet and very little else clears double figures for five of a kind, so the line wins on their own are thin.

It’s a game for players who like their action inside the spin rather than at the end of a long build. Five armies rewriting one valley, nine spins at a time – if that’s the war you fancy, the clans will have you.

5 Clans FAQs

• How do you trigger the Free Spins feature in 5 Clans?

  A single Gold Shield in view on reel 5 triggers the Free Spins feature, awarding nine free spins. If a Gold Shield lands on reel 5 during the feature itself, it awards three extra free spins.
• What does the Blue Shield do in 5 Clans?

  The Blue Shield awards a multiplier to any win on the spin, and it can be randomly activated by any reel win. The multiplier runs as high as 50x.
• What does the Purple Shield do in 5 Clans?

  The Purple Shield awards a character symbol and a free respin, and the respin can build up to 15 character symbols in total. With that many matching characters on a 5×3 grid, several paylines can fill at once.
• What is the RTP of 5 Clans?

  The overall theoretical return to player is 96.0%.
• Is 5 Clans high volatility?

  Yes, 5 Clans is a high volatility slot. Wins can be infrequent, with the shield modifiers and free spins doing most of the heavy lifting.
• Can you retrigger the free spins in 5 Clans?

  Yes. A Gold Shield landing in view on reel 5 during the free spins round awards three extra spins, and all five reel bonus shields can also trigger during the feature, making it more active than the base game.
• Can you buy the bonus on 5 Clans?

  Yes, a Buy A Bonus button is present in the game interface, allowing direct entry to the free spins feature.
• Who makes 5 Clans?

  5 Clans is made by Reflex Gaming.