Coin Volcano Slot – Free Demo

A main game with nothing in it

I haven't written about Booongo much lately.

The slot I'm going to examine in this review is a hold-and-win slot. I put 390 spins through it at a 1.00 stake. It has no usual paytable at all. For whatever cause, Booongo chose to strip the main game of every standard symbol, so that everything pays inside the Bonus Game or the Ultra Bonus Game.

Most players are probably already acquainted with the hold-and-win format, this being such a pared-back slot. I'll say immediately that this one lands any 3 symbols on the middle row of the reels to trigger a bonus. Those three open either the Bonus Game or the Ultra Bonus Game, and the game decides which. This doesn't mean that the real gameplay will be equivalent to other coin games. Booongo's Super Rich God and Scarab Temple come out of the same studio and the same coin-and-hold family. Hit frequency, bonus frequency and spread of the RTP can be worlds apart. In my run the trigger came round ten times in 390 spins, and nine of those were the plain Bonus Game. The 95.66% RTP means there's less value here compared to most contemporary slots.

The Sticky Coin is the only symbol you see

When it comes to the symbols there are no surprises involved, because there are none in the main game. The paying symbols are the Coins, the Mini, Minor and Major jackpots, Coin Collect and the Mystery symbols, and every one of them lives inside the two bonus rounds. On the reels, you will see only the Sticky Coin. It can appear at random and stays stuck until a bonus triggers, and then it pays 5x to 9x the stake. Three of my ten rounds carried one in, at 7x, 6x and 5x the stake. Landing them on the middle row does not raise the chance of triggering anything. Altering the bet wipes them from the reels.

Collecting nine to reach the Grand

Land 3 symbols on the middle row and you'll be given access to the Bonus Game with three re-spins from the outset, where only Bonus symbols appear on the reels and every one of them sticks. Everything that lands is held in place on the grid while the re-spins run, so a good round only accumulates: my fullest was eight coins on the grid at spin 139, worth 18 times the stake.

Now, every time a new Bonus symbol lands it will reset the count back to three, thus prolonging the round until the re-spins are exhausted or all 9 Bonus symbols are collected. The round is played at the bet that triggered it. Coins pay 1x to 4x. A Mystery symbol opens at the end of the round into anything except a Sticky Coin, and the Mystery Jackpot version opens only into Mini, Minor or Major. Mini, Minor and Major symbols landing at random pay their jackpots of 10x, 20x and 50x. The Mini and the Minor each came up three times across my ten rounds. The Volcano Multipliers Feature can trigger inside either bonus and shoot 1 to 9 lava multipliers onto random reel positions, applied at the close of the round. Where several lava multipliers hit the same position, that cell's multiplier value grows. Coin Collect gathers every Coin and Jackpot prize on the reels at once. Any multipliers on those cells are applied before the collection, and the Coin Collect symbol then sticks for the rest of the round.

The Grand comes from collecting all 9 symbols of any kind. Any mix counts, so nine 1x Coins fill the grid exactly as well as nine jackpot symbols do. It pays 500 times the stake on top of the round's total, with the game capped at 2,551 times the stake. Getting anywhere near that ceiling takes the Grand with lava multipliers stacked over a full grid. Since the Volcano Multipliers Feature is guaranteed at its start, the Ultra Bonus Game is the more volatile of the two, and it may trigger at random from the main game. Re-triggers of that multiplier feature are also more likely inside it. The Bonus Shop offers the Bonus Game for 30x the total bet and the Ultra Bonus Game for 75x, if you don't want to wait.

Final Minty Score: Ten bonus rounds paid 249.00 against 390.00 staked, a 63.8% return over 390 spins, and with no regular symbols in the main game there is nothing else in this slot to move that figure either way.

Ten bonus rounds out of 390 spins

Being a slot with no main-game pays at all, the whole thing rests on how those two rounds behave. My ten bonus rounds returned 249.00 between them against 390.00 staked. It's difficult to say anything about the hit frequency and balancing without truly having a fact sheet on hand or having played thousands of spins.

Having played Coin Volcano for a while my impression is that it's a grind. The balance peaked at 999.00, which was spin 1. That is founded on a restricted number of spins, however. Over 390 spins at a 1.00 stake I converted 1,000.00 into 859.00, a 63.8% return, with only 10 paying spins. The low point was 845.00, on spin 297. Every single one of them was a bonus trigger, since the main game pays nothing on its own. The next best paid 46 times the stake on spin 156. The best of them was an Ultra Bonus Game on spin 298 worth 52 times the stake. That was the only Ultra Bonus Game of the run. I once endured 53 spins without a win, and no round collected all nine symbols, so the Grand never landed. No Major landed in any of the ten rounds either.

I'm always glad to see fresh hold-and-win slots, although I can't see this one winning over players from the entrenched coin games.