Fruity Friends Slot Machine

If you’ve got a sweet tooth, and you like to win money (hey, who doesn’t?), give Fruity Friends a try. The 5-reel, non-progressive video slot from the NeoGames software suite is all about cartoonised fruit.

Released in 2012, the feel-good, fruit-laden fruit machine (try saying that five times fast after knocking back a few whiskies) has become a favourite of many players owing to its cute symbols and many features, which include free spins, a double-or-nothing gamble component and a juicy bonus game, indeed, only Astrodice and Reel Bandits seems to have a bigger following in the NeoGames catalogue.

Fruity Friends offers players the chance to win on 25 separate paylines. What’s more, when you hit a win the 3D fruit characters come to life, animatedly bouncing on the reels. At the summit of the pay-table, a x10,000 prize is up for grabs. That’s nothing if not sweet!

Funky Fruit

There are a variety of fruit-based characters populating the Fruity Friends grid. If these fruit are friends, their collective is not a small one. Sweet icons include a strawberry, an orange, an oddly-shaped lemon, a pear, a pair of cherries, a pineapple and a mango. Each piece of fruit is in remarkably good humour – the big-eyed characters are uniformly smiley.

In addition to the stars of the show, the game includes playing card icons, from Jack through to Ace. They look a little different, though – each symbol has a green border and is jam packed with fruit.

Combinations of each icon are linked with multipliers in the pay-table. The playing card icons are least valuable, though you can still net x100 for five Aces. Five Kings is x80, five Queens x50 and five Jacks x40. The fruity friends live further up the food chain. You’ll certainly want to consume five a day, as combinations of five, quite naturally, pay best. The lemon and pear icons won’t have you jumping for joy, but the mango and pineapple symbols will. The mango is linked to a x1,000 pay-out when you nab five in a line; it’s x200 for four and x40 for three. The pineapple, meanwhile, grants x5,000 for five and x500 for four.

Fruity Free Spins

The game benefits from its inclusion of wild and scatter icons, which many slot players have come to expect. The scatter symbol is the orange. Not only does it grant free spins, but it’s associated with cash values in the pay-table. The prizes aren’t too shabby, either: x5 for three, x25 for four and x100 for five.

Three, four or five oranges triggers 10, 20 or 30 free spins, and what’s more, a greater number of wild and scatter symbols are added to the reels during the bonus feature.

The Cherries Are Wild

Are the cherries lovers? Siblings? Just friends? Whatever their relationship, they seem to be gazing into one another’s eyes. We’d say there’s something going on there. Anyway, the cherries hold the key to the x10,000 top prize – just match five symbols to win big. You can also claim x1,000 for four or x100 for three. The cherries are wild, and can replace all other symbols except the orange scatter and strawberry bonus icon.

Fruity Friends Bonus Game

It’s easy to enter the Fruity Friends bonus game. All you have to do is land the smirking strawberry symbol anywhere on reels and one five simultaneously. In the bonus game, it’s simply a case of picking pieces of fruit to reveal cash prizes. While some fruit contain trophies, others contain diddly squat. Win multipliers are increased by one for every trophy you manage to uncover. Hitting Collect cashes you out, and you are returned to the main game. Incidentally, the bonus cannot be triggered during free spins.

The Gamble Option

Not all NeoGames slots include a gamble function, but I’m pleased to report that Fruity Friends is one that does. Players can gamble after regular line wins. What’s more, they can choose to gamble their entire bank roll or 50%. The game itself is simple – you just need to guess the colour of a playing card drawn randomly from the deck. Guess correctly and you’ll double your cash. You can also choose to guess the suit; if you guess right, you’ll quadruple your dough. Guess wrong, though, and you forfeit the lot.

Friend Or Foe?

In Fruity Friends, NeoGames have produced a splendid little game. Not only does it look good, with fine graphics and smart animations, but the gameplay – utilising wilds, scatters, multipliers and a bonus round – is excellent. Satisfy that fruit craving at your earliest possible convenience.