Shining Crown Cash Heat Slot – Free Demo

An old-fashioned grid with coins laid over it

Shining Crown Cash Heat by EGT Digital will certainly be a powerful candidate when the moment arrives to propose the most old-fashioned games on the market. The game is released in more than one RTP variant, 96.15% and 96.50%. It has a rather simple fruit machine theme and is played using a 5 by 3 grid arrangement in combination with 10 fixed paylines, and the gameplay itself doesn't depart from the conventional manner of crafting slots.

This rather basic slot is medium volatility. Across my 350 spins the two Cash Heat rounds on spins 8 and 56 accounted for 146,000 credits between them. It is all about the Crown Coin bonus symbol, which can bear cash values of up to 25x the bet, and these are held in view during the respins and can add together to grant respectable payouts. Small values are the common case: one frame from my session shows two Crown Coins carrying 400 each, the stake itself, on a spin that paid 1,200 credits.

The crowns do the work the fruit used to

Shining Crown Cash Heat is a dish that won't be to everyone's taste, due to its somewhat drab not-for-the-hardcore gambler look. The base game underneath it is Shining Crown, the plain fruit machine this one is built out of, with the Crown Coins and the respins laid over the top. The game does gain a few marks for its visuals and animations, whatever one's view of the theme may be, and the crowns piling up across the grid look surprisingly solid. The coin values stamped on them are an amusing touch. Each Crown Coin carries either a cash value or one of the Mini, Minor and Major Cash levels. On the paytable you will spot the Wild Crown, the Scatter Dollar and the Scatter Star. The Scatter Dollar pays from anywhere on the reels, at 5x the stake for three, 20x for four and 100x for five. The Wild Crown lands on reels 2, 3 and 4 only, and the first of these is the most helpful of the symbols, expanding over its entire reel. The Scatter Star is the narrower of the two, landing on reels 1, 3 and 5 and paying 20x the stake for three.

The Wild Crown never reaches the outer reels

The wild symbol is of central importance in this game. It carries no line pay of its own. To land any substantial wins you're going to need its aid, and the Wild Crown, depicted by a golden crown, substitutes for all ordinary symbols. On spin 79 an expanded Wild Crown on reel 3 returned 16,400 credits, 41x the stake, the largest win of my session outside the bonus. You cannot land a Wild Crown on the outer reels, as you can see in the paytable, and it only shows on reels 2, 3 and 4. Wins are formed from the leftmost reel rightwards, on three or more matching symbols along one of the 10 fixed lines.

Five Cash Heat rounds, and not one reset the counter

The biggest wins will come from Cash Heat. Mine triggered five times in 350 spins, on 5, 5, 5, 6 and 8 Crown Coins. That is the hold and win round that 5 to 14 Crown Coins trigger, locking the coins and granting 3 respins that restart every time another coin lands. EGT Digital runs the same lock-and-respin shape in its own 40 Super Hot Bell Link. Fill all 15 positions and the Grand Cash level is awarded at 1,000 times the stake, with Major Cash at 250x, Minor Cash at 100x and Mini Cash at 30x below it. The two big rounds I hit, 157x the stake on spin 8 and 208x on spin 56, both included the Minor Cash level at 100x. It's not all that poor for a fruit slot either, while it's not exactly the most striking potential I've seen in a slot. None of my five rounds filled all 15 positions, so the Grand Cash level never came into play.

Minty’s Expert Conclusion: Five Cash Heat rounds paid 172,400 credits of the 243,960 my session won, which is 71% of everything that came back through a feature that fired five times in 350 spins. The fruit reels underneath are there to pass the time until a coin drops, and 68 of my 99 paying spins handed back less than the 400 I had put in. A run like mine finishes well ahead; the arithmetic that gets it there is lumpy enough that a different 350 spins could look nothing like it.

350 spins at a 400-credit stake

The stark look of the slot is fascinating at first. My balance ran from 49,600 credits at the start to 153,560 by spin 350. Once the freshness runs out, it struggles to hold the attention of the player, and the cause for this mostly comes down to the shortage of features, the scratch-card type gameplay and the constraints of the layout. The gaps between my five Cash Heat triggers ran 48, 98, 58 and 103 spins. Matters are aided, though, by the fact that the game does not necessarily devour your whole balance. Mine dipped to 46,000 at its lowest and peaked at 196,160 on spin 154. Over 350 spins at a 400-credit stake I bet 140,000 credits and won back 243,960, a return of 174.3%, with five Cash Heat rounds delivering 172,400 of that, or 71% of everything won. In all five of those rounds the respin counter never reset, so no round got past its opening three respins.

The first impression outlasts the game

It's a shame that Shining Crown Cash Heat doesn't endure over time, as it does make a respectable first impression. The last of my five rounds, on spin 315, paid 9x the stake in Crown Coin values alone. Only 99 of my 350 spins paid anything at all, and 68 of those paid less than the stake. My longest stretch with nothing at all was 13 spins, ending on spin 314. Once you settle into the repetitive nature of it, you'll find yourself pondering when Shining Crown Cash Heat is going to advance to something more engaging.