Game in Action
Screenshot of the Fire Horse Slot
Oddly enough the look of Fire Horse feels somewhat dated. IGT’s slots often have a landbased original and here you have a feeling that you’re playing a landbased slot machine on your computer. Play it on mobile instead, where the slot looks a lot better.
That being said, the slot does have its moments. The higher paying symbols show some fiery steeds and the pottery and coins on the symbols seem to date back to ancient times. Your attention will be held by these symbols as well as the orb scatter, the wilds and the scatter symbol that just says ‘scatter’.
The slot packs a surprising punch even in the base game, thanks to multi-way xtra wins, 720 paylines and the fact that wins count from left to right as well as right to left. And all that applies even before you triggered the free spin bonus.
Bonuses
There are scatter symbols that simply read ‘scatter’, but they don’t actually trigger a bonus. Instead any three or more of them multiply your winnings. Get 3 and you’ll get a 2x multiplier on your total bet. 4 scatters will get you a 10x multiplier and 5 will result in a 50x multiplier. More often than not, however, it stops at 3 scatters on the reels.
The wilds will be of more interested, because they usually appear stacked on reels 2, 3 and 5. Since the slot pays both ways, the wilds can be applied to wins both ways as well. If you get more than one reel stacked with wilds, your eyes will soon turn into dollar signs.
The multi-way xtra wins are a pretty interesting feature of the slot. This feature requires a little math to be understood. The slot will thankfully always tell you what your winnings will be. So, if it says your winning combination is 75 coins x 12, that’s owed to the multi-way xtra feature.
If you get any symbol in a winning combination, the number of symbols per reel that are part of the winning combination is calculated in the overall payout. Say a 4-of-a-kind win shows up on the reels. Since it’s possible that matching symbols show up stacked and you have 720 ways to win, a winning combination could cover more than one way of winning. If a coin symbol, for instance, shows up once on reel 1, three times on reel 2, three times on reel 3 and twice on reel 4, your win is calculated as 20 x the multi-way xtra wins. You win 20 coins for four of a kind of the coin symbol. In the example above the multi-way xtra wins would be calculated as such: 1x3x3x2 = 18. So your win of 20 coins is multiplied by 18 here, resulting in a win of 360 coins.
Thankfully you don’t have to do the math. This is just an example to show you how it works.
Finally there’s also a free spin feature. You need to get the pink (or purple) orb once on every reel in order to trigger the free spins. That sounds difficult, but it is doable. If you have 1 orb on every reel, you get started on 8 free spins. The orb changes colour during the free spin, but it allows you to re-trigger free spins from within, if you catch at least five more orbs (one on each reel) during the free spins.
But like the multi-way xtra wins you can also get xtra spins. So, if you have more than one orb on a reel, the spins you’ll start off with get multiplied. It’s therefore possible to start off with a staggering 96 free spins. More often than not you’ll only get 16, but that’s a good start.
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Summary
Whilst Fire Horse didn’t convince us in the graphics department, the features are intriguing enough. It all adds up to some great winning opportunities, no matter which way you look at it. At the same time this is a medium variance slot, which means wins are relatively frequent and can be pretty decent, even in the base game.
That said, it’s entirely possible to have long dry spells with nothing much happening. That’s especially frustrating when you are waiting for the free spins to trigger, but keep getting 3 or 4 of the required scatters, whilst the fifth remains elusive. Still, if you like Siberian Storm, one of IGT’s favourites, you will like Fire Horse as well.
Our rating: