Red Hot Luck Slot Review
We all know luck is predominantly associated with Irish folk – all clover leaves, horseshoes, plucky Leprechauns, mystical pots of gold, and the like. Whether this is grounded in myth or reality is another matter.
It’s not often, however, that we hear the concept closely connected with the colour red. “How’s your luck?” “Gee, Red Hot!” Nah, doesn’t ring too many bells. All that might be about to change however courtesy of prolific developer Pragmatic Play who are back with yet another fiery release, this one titled Red Hot Luck, where classic slot convention is flipped squarely on its head.
Curious to know more? Then strap in as we take the provider’s newest release for a burn with our detailed review.
Red Hot Luck Base Game and Features
A red hot title gets an equally scorching backdrop, where lava pours down volcano cracks amid what is a decidedly desolate scene, headlined by a volcano erupting in all its molten glory.
Turning our attention to the technical side of things we discover a game matrix made up of 7 reels and 7 rows framed by a wooden border that is somehow resistant to the shower of flames raining down. Classic royal playing card icons from J-A step in as the low pays, with gems in the colours of blue, green, and pink chosen to represent the highs.
Highly volatile, wins are achieved by landing a minimum amount of identical symbols adjacently in either a horizontal or vertical direction – paying both ways, in other words. When it comes to calculating wins, Red Hot Luck operates a little differently to pretty much just about every slot out there. Instead of awarding standard monetary payouts for winning combinations, symbols award points according to the cluster size, maxing out at 2,450 points for covering the entire board in the same symbol type.
Cascades are here to aid with the flow of the game, performing their usual function by removing winning symbols from the board, allowing a fresh set to tumble in for repeated shots at wins. Now, once cascades conclude and the current spin ends, all points earned in that game round are aggregated and converted into a multiplier value which is then duly applied to your wager amount to calculate your resulting payout.
Look out for the star symbol. This is the slot’s scatter symbol and comes carrying a multiplier value between 2x and 500x which is applied to a game-round win after all cascades have come to an end. Note it’s not possible to land scatters during a cascade sequence. On a final note, multiplier values are added together should two or more scatters show up at once.
Free Spins
Red Hot Luck’s main event is activated by catching 4 scatters during a base game spin, equipping players with 10 Free Spins. Once the round is in progress, landing a multiplier as part of a winning spin sees that value get collected by a global multiplier.
From then on, each subsequent winning spin involving a scatter gets multiplied by the Total Multiplier, while retriggers are in the offing for landing an additional 4 scatters.
Red Hot Luck: Our Verdict
As an industry that prides itself on innovation, it’s always heartening to see studios – especially those that have been in the game since forever – attempt to push the boundaries with newfangled mechanics seldom seen in a slot game.
Pragmatic Play achieves that to a degree with its novel PowerPays mechanic which has been dusted off for another outing since debuting in Yum Yum PowerPays, but it’s hard to shake off the feeling that the device is somewhat redundant. In effect, all PowerPays does is award points/multipliers as opposed to cash, and not much more. Hardly the bastion of innovation.
That irk aside, Red Hot Luck does have its merits. It’s supremely polished in typical Pragmatic style; cascades are always an appreciated touch, leading to prolonged cascades of wins here and there; and incorporating a pay-both-ways system ensures wins arrive with a fair degree of frequency. A so-so 5,000x max win does let the side down again, though, and in truth, there are far more superior options available for players looking to set the reels alight.