Chili Eruption Thundershots Slot Review
A cauldron of bubbling chili sauce hangs over the reels, whole red peppers floating in the orange stew, cacti and rust-red mesas behind the striped fiesta stage. That pot is the smartest thing about Chili Eruption Thundershots: Playtech have routed all three of its bonus rounds through a single symbol, and the gamble gives this game a shape most 20-liners never manage.
It’s a lot of design weight for one symbol to carry, and it holds. The rest is familiar scaffolding: a 5×3 grid, 20 paylines and 96.17% RTP, sitting alongside Fortune Fortune Thundershots and Plunder Ahoy Thundershots in the format’s line-up.
Reels, Lines and the Paytable
Wins pay left to right across 20 fixed lines, and only the highest combination on each line counts. Wins on different lines add together. Every paytable value is a multiple of the total bet rather than the line bet, which keeps the maths simple to read.
The premium symbols are the fiesta props, with the royals propping up the bottom of the table. The wild, a labelled bottle, is the richest symbol on the reels and stands in for anything. These are the values for three, four and five of a kind:
- Wild: 1.2x, 5x, 25x
- Pinata: 1x, 4x, 15x
- Skull: 1x, 3x, 10x
- Sombrero: 0.8x, 2x, 5x
- Maracas: 0.4x, 1.6x, 4x
- K / A: 0.3x, 1.2x, 3x
- Q: 0.2x, 1x, 2x
A five-wild line at 25x the stake is the best the base game offers on its own. The gap between that and the second-best line, a 15x pinata five, is wide enough to tell you where the real money is meant to come from: the rounds, not the reels.
The royals tell the same story from the other end. Five queens returns twice the stake, five Ks or As three times, and those are the combinations you’ll see most often. Line wins of that size don’t move a session; they keep it ticking while the pot fills.
Outside the paytable, the basics are standard for the format. Turbo mode speeds up the win animations and reel spins. Autoplay can be set to a fixed count or to run until a feature triggers, and the win field accumulates as line wins land together on a spin.
The Pot and the Chili Symbols
The chili is the only symbol with a job beyond paying, and the count in view is what routes you through the game. One or two don’t win anything directly. Singles and pairs feed the cauldron instead, and a well-fed pot can boil over into either of the game’s two bigger rounds.
Three is the magic number for the headline round. The full routing looks like this:
- 1 or 2 chilis in view: added to the pot, which may trigger Saucy Super Spins or Thundershots
- 3 chilis in view: awards Free Games
- Wild: substitutes on paylines and tops the paytable at 25x for five
It’s a neat piece of visual feedback. Every near-miss with one or two peppers visible still feeds something, so the pot fills gradually across spins rather than resetting to nothing each time.
It also gives the base game a second thing to watch. On a standard 20-liner, a spin either wins or it doesn’t; here, a losing spin with a chili in view still moves you forward, and the cauldron sitting above the reels makes that progress impossible to ignore.
Free Games
Any three chilis in view awards the Free Games round, and the award is variable: up to 12 free games or a multiplier of up to x8. Which of the two you receive, and at which value, is decided at trigger time rather than by anything you do.
The x8 multiplier is the more interesting half of the pair. On a 5×3, 20-line layout, a full screen of premium symbols under an x8 multiplier is where this game’s serious money would come from if the reels line up.
Whatever the round touches, it touches hard. The multiplier’s banner stays on screen throughout, so there’s no missing which value you’re playing under, and every line win that lands beneath it pays accordingly.
Saucy Super Spins
Reached through the pot rather than a symbol count, Saucy Super Spins work differently from a normal free spins round. Each spin begins with the pot tipping its contents over the grid, scattering extra wilds and chili symbols among the reels before they settle.
That’s a round which feeds itself. The extra chilis it drops can count towards further features, while the wilds sharpen the payline maths on a grid that’s suddenly much friendlier than the base game’s.
Because the tip happens on every spin of the round, the middle of a Super Spins sequence is where the reels are at their most crowded. Wilds stacking on top of wilds is the visible payoff, and with the wild already the top payer at 25x for five, a well-timed tip is worth more than most base game spins put together.
Thundershots
The namesake round is also reached through the pot. Thundershots pays instant cash prizes and can award boosted versions of both Free Games and Saucy Super Spins, which makes it less a round in its own right and more a doorway to the best versions of everything else on offer.
Structurally, that’s the appeal: the three rounds stack. Thundershots can hand you an upgraded Free Games round with a bigger multiplier, and the Super Spins inside it come pre-loaded with pot tips.
The instant cash prizes are the straightforward part. They land as fixed amounts rather than multiplier steps, which makes Thundershots the one round in the game that can pay without the reels needing to do anything dramatic first.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.7/10
Most of a session here goes to filling the pot, one or two peppers at a time, and that slow simmer is precisely why somebody would pick it over the dozens of other 20-liners on the same shelf. Every chili moves you towards something, even the lonely single on reel five, and the cauldron makes that progress impossible to ignore.
The strength is the layering. All three rounds hang off the same chili count, and Thundershots can hand out boosted versions of the other two, so a good run compounds instead of starting again. The weakness is what sits between rounds: the paytable tops out at 25x for five wilds, and most of the fiesta is small change while you wait.
It’s a good fit for players who enjoy a long build towards stacked bonuses, and a poor one for anyone who wants their money from the paylines. Line-win chasers will go hungry between rounds; pot-watchers will find this one of the more rewarding cauldrons Playtech have put on the stove.
Chili Eruption Thundershots FAQs
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What is the RTP of Chili Eruption Thundershots?
96.17%. -
How do you trigger Free Games in Chili Eruption Thundershots?
Any three chilis in view awards the Free Games round. You can win up to 12 free games or a multiplier of up to x8. -
What do one or two chili symbols do?
They don’t pay directly. They add to the sauce pot above the reels, and the pot may then trigger Saucy Super Spins or Thundershots. -
What are Saucy Super Spins?
They’re a free spins round triggered through the pot. At the start of each Saucy Super Spin, the pot tips and randomly adds wilds and chili symbols to the reels. -
What is Thundershots?
Thundershots is the game’s headline round, triggered via the pot mechanic. It awards instant cash prizes and can hand out boosted versions of Free Games and Saucy Super Spins. -
How many paylines does Chili Eruption Thundershots have?
It has 20 fixed paylines on a 5×3 grid, with only the highest winning combination paying on each line. -
What is the grid size of Chili Eruption Thundershots?
5×3, with five reels and three rows. -
Who makes Chili Eruption Thundershots?
Playtech. The game was released on 9 March 2021 as part of their Thundershots range.
