Flame Busters Slot – Free Demo

Two hundred spins without an alarm

Few craft ways-to-win slots on a more individual basis than developer Thunderkick does, and this time they have gone fire-mad and launched a slot based around firefighters. I put 200 spins through it at a 7.50 stake and the Bonus game never once arrived. You won't spot many cats trapped up trees here though. These blazes are of the wild, the 'burn-the-whole-block-down' sort, in pixel art, and when it comes to features, matters aren't quite so exciting. Fifty of the 200 spins paid anything at all, and 21 of those 50 came back under the 7.50 stake. There is a Fire Drill which is somewhat fresh. Aside from that, though, Thunderkick has employed the same features you expect to find in many of their slots. I finished 952.50 down on a starting balance of 5,000.00.

Ladders, hoses and a 243 plate

It must have been a sweltering day at the station when Thunderkick built the game, and the reels are windows in a fire station, set against a pixel-art city skyline. On the alarm front, there are a few bells poised to ring above the reels, and firemen on ladders working hoses down either side of the building.

Click the arrow, and the scene shifts, so now players are met by a 5 reel game area, blanketed in the smouldering symbols. I ran mine at 7.50 a spin from the first spin to the last. Reels carry 3 symbols each. Only the highest win per pay way is paid, and all the pay way wins in a round are added together and shown at the end of it. There are 243 fixed ways to win travelling left to right from reel 1, and the number of ways doesn't vary on each spin, so 3 of a kind is the minimum you need for a payout. Those ways paid on one spin in four across my run. Due to the dreary background of the low pay symbols, the reels appear a little flat. My longest stretch without a win of any size was 13 spins, ending on spin 148.

Where 96.1% and 36.5% part company

Tackling the flames requires setting a bet. Pays are stated relative to the current bet, so the whole paytable scales with whatever you put in. The math model starts and ends at an RTP rating of 96.1%. My own 200 spins came back at 36.5%, a long way under it. That is a single figure, since there is no bonus buy to lift it.

Helping players form wins is the Wild. It substitutes for any symbol except the scatter.

Final Minty Score: Flame Busters took 1,500.00 off me across those 200 spins and handed back 547.50, and the Alarm Bells never once landed three deep. The 96.1% printed on the rules screen has to come from somewhere, and on this reel set most of it sits inside a round I paid for two hundred times and did not see.

The Fire symbol and the drill that makes more of them

There won't be many shocks here. Most features are tried and true staples that often pad out a Thunderkick slot, and in this section players will encounter Fire symbols, the Fire Drill, the Bonus game, and Coin Ignition. Dragon Horn shares the 243 ways and Pink Elephants shares the 96.1%. Coin Ignition exists only inside the Bonus game, so it stays out of reach until the bells land.

The Fire symbols have been crafted to resemble flames, and a certain number of them may surface randomly on any spin, all settling into the same matching symbol to help boost the chance of landing large wins. They are never wild and never scatter. That also means they can never stand in as an Alarm Bell, so they bring the Bonus game no closer.

The Fire Drill can hit at random in the base game. It converts 1 to 5 Coin symbols - and every coin of the same kind - into Fire symbols.

Three bells to get in, three more to climb

You'll need at least 3 Alarm Bell scatters in view to trigger the Bonus game. In 200 spins I did not land three at once. 3 grants 10 free spins, 4 grants 15, and 5 grants 20.

During the Bonus game a building is climbed, and every 3 scatters collected during the round unlocks a floor and adds 2 additional free spins. There are 5 levels in the building. Each level ignites one more coin through Coin Ignition, with the lowest coin remaining lit for the rest of the round. At Level 5 all five coins are Fire symbols.

The Fire Drill is the only new part

Albeit in a different shape, its sort of the same thing from Thunderkick, so it's tough to get super thrilled about Flame Busters. My run took 5,000.00 down to 4,047.50 without the Bonus game ever appearing. That's not to say it's a poor game at all, and there is a reason why the team continue to employ the same features - the gaming public is clearly lapping them up. The best single spin I had was spin 53, which paid 69.00, or 9.2 times the stake. Mystery symbols in all stages of the game always adds a pleasing dimension. During the Bonus game that is pepped up further by the igniting coins. The high point of my balance was 5,015.00, and it came on spin 1.

Adding a slightly different flavour is the cleverly named Fire Drill. It works on coin symbols only, so the higher paying symbols are outside its reach. Like many random features, it is your best friend when it dishes out Fire symbols, your worst foe when it doesn't go your way.

Flame Busters is another decent ways-to-win slot from Thunderkick, and no, it won't win any originality prizes, though it's unlikely that aim was ever on the drawing board.