Pirots Slot – Free Demo

Five rows that grow to eight when a bomb goes off

The hunt for large wins unfolds on a grid that begins at 5 rows by 5 columns, and it grows up to 8 rows by 8 columns as bombs detonate. Every round in normal mode starts back at the 5x5 size, so the grid has to be rebuilt from scratch each time. The birds do the work for you, each travelling across the grid to collect the orthogonally adjacent symbols in its own colour. Feature symbols are picked up the same way, by a bird that reaches them. Their colours are your instruments, and gems can emerge at any of five win levels.

This is a slot played from 0.20 to 100.00 a drop. The session behind this review ran at 6.00 a drop for all 410 of them. Players get free drops and feature symbols with six distinct awards: the wild, the transform, the two upgrades, the coin and the bomb. The longest stretch without a win in that session ran to 15 drops and ended on drop 228.

The initial drops are both hectic and theatrical. The balance peaked at 5,540.00 on drop 11, one drop after a 594.00 hit worth 99 times the stake. Its more surface-level components have good transitions and effects, but its mechanics don't quite have the same gloss. Elk Studios also makes Pirots 4 and Bompers.

Birds only collect what is next to them

The paying symbols are the gems, the coins and the wilds. A wild stands in for any gem at that gem's current win level. Only the symbols orthogonally next to a bird can be collected. That 594.00 drop came from the red bird reaching a cluster of gems two upgrade symbols had already carried to win level 4. That renders it a bit more exacting than I would have liked, and thus lowers the chance of landing a large collection. A single collection of same-colour gems with one coin in it paid 22.80 on drop 121, 3.8 times the stake. Gems begin every base-game drop at win level 1 and can be upgraded as far as win level 5, while the coin symbols pay their value times the present active bet level.

Gems are collected in groups of the collecting bird's colour, and when there are no further wins, neighbouring birds might arbitrarily swap places, with a chance to produce a win, and the game arrives with a bonus symbol as well. Every other symbol a bird picks up does count towards that total. It does not count towards the collection that triggers a feature award.

What the six feature symbols actually do

Pivotal to the game are the 6 feature symbols. The X-iter menu sells a Feature Bonanza drop at 10x the bet, one drop with a guaranteed full collection and so a guaranteed feature award. They are awarded when sufficient symbols are collected during a round; the more collection, the more feature awards, and several can pile up and trigger together. Nothing was bought from that menu during the session; every drop was paid at the base stake. At that point 3 gems change into feature symbols, once no further symbols can be collected:

Wild - stands in for any gem at its present win level.
Transform - converts a cluster of gems around it into the collecting bird's colour. Or into a random quantity of feature symbols.
Upgrade - the white one lifts gems of the collecting bird's colour by 1 to 3 win levels, to a maximum of 5. If that colour is already maxed, it upgrades a random other gem. No upgrade happens at all when every gem is already sitting at level 5. The multicoloured one upgrades all gem kinds at once.
Bomb - it detonates when no wins linger. The birds are taken off the grid for the blast and come back at their nests as the refill lands. That clears adjacent non-feature symbols for a redrop, shifts all birds to fresh positions and enlarges the grid up to the 8x8 maximum.

Five free drops, arriving on drop 299

Collected in the base game, three bonus symbols will trigger the free drop feature correspondingly:

3 bonus symbols - 5 free drops, played on from the present row and column count. The session's only trigger came on drop 299.

Grid size, symbol collection and gem win levels endure throughout, and the winnings pay out at the close of the mode, while the free drop feature can re-trigger on another three bonus symbols. No further bonus symbols were collected inside those five drops, so the mode ran its stated length and stopped. There is not much more to the free drop feature than this, unless I missed out on some crucial details such as improved grids or whatever. The Super Bonus bought from the X-iter menu is the version that does change the grid, playing every free drop at the maximum size and making all upgrade symbols upgrade all gems.

The Minty Take: Four hundred and ten drops at 6.00 came back at 78.6%, and a third of everything I won arrived in the five free drops on drop 299 — take those out and the rest of the afternoon was 51 wins smaller than the stake propping up a very loud grid.

94.0% claimed, 78.6% over 410 drops

In motion, Pirots presents itself as a slot with a lot of bells and whistles. The balance opened at 5,000.00 and closed at 4,472.60. In truth, the payouts are disappointingly low - 410 drops at a stake of 6.00 gave back 78.6% of what I wagered, with only 97 of them paying at all and 51 of those paying less than the stake. That is 2,460.00 staked against 1,932.60 returned. Something just feels oddly off about the mathematical model, although it is hard to pinpoint. The run bottomed out at 4,257.20. The lone bonus mode I attained, on drop 299, paid 648.00, or 108 times the stake. That took the balance back up to 4,899.20. That was 34% of everything I won.

As declared by the provider, however, there is a max win potential of 10,000 times the stake involved here. The round finishes at once if it is reached. X-iter also sells a Bonus Hunt drop at 3x the bet, with quadruple the chance of triggering the bonus game, and a single maximum-grid drop at 25x. The declared RTP is 94.0% in the base game and in every X-iter mode alike, with the Super Bonus at 500x the bet and the plain Bonus at 100x.