Wild Fire Riches Slot
Ainsworth might still be considered by many to be a small slot manufacturer amongst the giants, but with the new Wild Fire Riches game, it’s clear there is no limit to their ambitions. In the past most Ainsworth games, such as the popular Dragon Lines game, have mostly been 5x3 reel games with a free spins bonus round. They also hold a lot in common with Aristocrat slots (The companies have the same founder so it’s no big surprise) though the quality of visuals and audio from the Ainsworth slots is generally better than all but the biggest branded Aristocrat titles.
Wild Fire Riches changes things dramatically, though the royal playing cards are very much still present, everything else on the slot is brand new, including the reel layout. The new slot has a 33555-reel setup, it looks very similar to NetEnt’s Dazzle me and the new Motorhead slot game structure. Wild Fire Riches, by virtue of all three of its end reels being 5 high, has more pay-lines than even those slot – there are 100 in total. If that wasn’t enough, in the free spins bonus there are four complete reel sets in play at the same time.
With fiery graphics, serial win potential and some clever wild symbol action, Wild Fire Riches might just set the online slot world alight!
Theme
This game is a sizzler and no doubt, the deep purple reel backdrop sits on an entire screen of realistic animated flames. It seems almost everything on the slot is on fire, here we have a pyromaniacs dream with all the high paying symbols trail blazing their way around the screen. The animations too are filled with explosions of sound and colour. If you called this Ainsworth’s most visually exciting and attractive slot, I don’t think you would be overstating things.
The pay icons themselves fit in with the riches theme of the game name. There’s burning coins, hot dice and simmering cauldrons full of gold. You will want to keep a particular eye on the scatter and wild symbols, these are very similar to each other but offer different effects at various stages of the gameplay. Particularly, the stock wild, doesn’t turn other symbols itself, instead a diamond with lightning effects becomes a substitute for all symbols except the scatter when the wild is active. Everything you need to know on the symbols, including their different values for the bonus game, is available at a click of the games clear pay-table.
Gameplay & Features
A game called Wild Fire Riches is clearly going to feature some heavy wild action. There’s three in play on the game, a fixed and, possibly the most exciting expanded wild we’ve seen in a long time in addition to a secondary scatter wild. The fixed wild appears on all of the reels and is the only wild to do so, it turns every symbol into a diamond which is a universal substituting icon.
The Wild Fire Riches Wild is an interesting one, this takes the standard game logo scatter (which triggers the free spins) and adds a wild value to it. With this in place scatter combinations which are too small to trigger a spins bonus round still carry a decent reward, it’s an unusual mechanic and in our opinion, a good one!
Last up, and the one you want, is the Whopper Wild. Land this anywhere on reels 3-5 in the base game and the latter three reels go fully wild! It’s even better in the free spins games as those reels cover all four reel sets available in the bonus. With such a big feature in place, this can leave the individual line wins a little lacking in spice, but a full screen wild win will doubtless make up for that.
The free spins, of which 8 are awarded by 3 scatters, open up the same reel structure duplicated four times. The pay-lines however, change. There are still 100 in play, but they now run the whole expanded reel grid, we can only imagine the variance needed to have 400 in play for a true duplication of the base game!
Summary
On the surface, Wild Fire Riches seems to have it all. A decent RTP, entertaining gameplay and good mix of hit ratio / variance all bring the heat to this game. What lets it down slightly is the poor symbol values. It’s clear that even full screen wins of the middle icons and below bring relatively low pay-outs compared to other games. There could be a little more bite on the slot I think to accommodate a little more value at the mid / top end of the pay-table.
That said, this is a great slot, it offers far more action than the similar sized colossal reel slots like Spartacus over at WMS by confining the extra reels to just the free spins round. Those games are renowned for long play-stretches of small and medium sized wins do if you like them and want something similar but hotter, this might just be your game. Wild Fire isn’t that weak, it just has headroom for a little more variance, by offering slightly more than its obvious competitors, Ainsworth may have a winner on their hands.
