Casino Bonuses
| Provider | Microgaming |
| Reels | 5 |
| Rows | 4 |
| Paylines | 20 |
| Bonus Rounds | 3 |
| Bet Range | 0.20 - 10 |
| Volatility | High |
| Max Win | 5,000x |
| Bonus Buy | Yes |
| RTP | 96.01% |
| Our Rating | 7.5 |
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Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Demo & Review
Game Overview
If there’s just one thing that I believe every one of us has learned before we reach the age of 25, it’s that life simply adores throwing weird and wacky coincidences our way whenever it gets an opportunity! Today’s strange happening revolves around the word ‘Piranha’ – as in, the scary-looking fish with huge teeth, or the title of Pear Fiction’s new online slot machine, Blazing Piranhas! What’s the big deal with these most evil undersea dwellers? I’ve probably never needed to type the word during the past decade, requiring me to look up how to spell it earlier this week. In fact, this is the third time I’ve needed to use the word in just five days. What could this mean? I’m not sure, but I do know that this new game uses 20 paylines and has a 96.01% RTP along with a 5,000x jackpot.
Ahem. Whilst I think that over, I guess I will try and take my mind off of things by telling you more details about the features Pear Fiction Studios has implemented into Blazing Piranhas! First, the Piranha Wild is a walking wild symbol that automatically moves towards any human characters found on the playfield. Next is the Lock & Win bonus, a three-spin feature triggered by hitting six coin symbols on a single spin. The highlights of that bonus are the five jackpot prizes shown to the left of the playfield. If you’re struggling to hit the Lock & Win bonus, then don’t worry – you can also hit a jackpot simply by collecting the same coins over an extended session of play. Did you think we were done? Not so fast there fisherman! Scatter symbols are also included on the reels of this game, used to trigger a separate free spins bonus which allows you to select your favoured combination of random wilds and spin count.
I’m not scared of things that go bump in the night… but that lamp from Amityville Horror? That frightened the hell out of me when I was about 10 years old! Clowns are fine, but don’t even get me started on the flying balls from Phantasm 2! Or Blazing Piranhas! Go ahead and try our free demo slot below – I’m not going near it with a ten foot fishing rod!
Blazing Piranhas Slot Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols
I was intrigued to find out just how often the word Piranha appears in our review library, considering my experiences earlier in the week. It turns out that the term only shows up in my review of Hacksaw’s Beast Below just now – an exciting release that, whilst severely lacking in originality, offers a big jackpot and some great features. Don’t be fooled though – I know these things are everywhere beneath the surface! Take 4ThePlayer’s 4 Fantastic Fish, for example – a cutesy-looking game with bloody Piranha lurking on its paytable! Bottom line – there’s plenty of competition in the world of scary fish slots, and Pear Fiction’s new game is going to need to severely impress if it’s going to stand out from such a crowd. Speaking of which – I think that’s more than enough introductions – let’s get down to business!
The four lucky chaps who don’t realise that a Piranha is slowly moving towards them with an inevitably terrifying outcome sit at the top of the paytable. The purple girl is the most valuable of the bunch with a payout of 25x the total bet for a complete payline of five of a kind, whilst her boyfriend in red will earn you 15x your stake if all five of his symbols show up. The fish isn’t going to have to swim far if you hit five of a kind, is he! I’m sure he’ll head for the hippy green chick – she’s worth 10x for a complete payline, whilst the geeky blue kid completes the set with returns of 7x for a five of a kind combination of his symbols. The low-paying symbols are represented by four piranhas instead of boring old royals or playing card suits. Better still, they’re handily coloured in the same shades as the four character symbols – I always appreciate the small touches such as this, as I quickly learned that the purple symbols were the best and the blues were the worst, making it super quick to gauge how I was doing from spin to spin.
The minimum/maximum permitted wagers have been set at €0.20 and €10.00 per spin respectively, but the interesting part is that Pear Fiction has allowed players to increase or decrease their wager in €0.05 steps – an almost redundant level of granularity! Still, it’s nice to have the option, isn’t it?
Base Game & Modifiers
Moving on to the base game, Blazing Piranhas utilises a slightly extended reel set with five columns of four rows each. This is a common configuration in the online casino world nowadays, but most games that use a playfield of this size will do so with 1,024 payways or a high number of paylines. This game pairs its larger-than-average layout with just 20 fixed paylines, which I did worry would make dead spins a frustratingly common occurrence. Fortunately, the developer has also chosen to lay out the game’s symbols in stacks rather than solo items sitting on their own.
Piranha Wilds
The Piranha Wild symbol is an additional walking wild that can appear alongside the regular ‘skull and crossbones’ wild. Unlike the latter, however, the Piranha Wild will move left if a character symbol is visible anywhere in that direction! If the Piranha Wild is unsuccessful in finding its prey in an adjacent position, then it will transform into a regular wild.
Lock ‘n’ Win Coins
Coins come in several colours in Blazing Piranha’s – the regular coin is yellow and awards a cash prize of between 1x and 12x the total bet, and it is also the only coin to feature on the base game reels. Whenever these coins appear, they will automatically be collected in the meter shown directly above the playfield; filling the meter to the top will trigger the jackpot wheel. The remaining coins are used in the Lock & Win bonus round – see below for full details on both of these features.
Blazing Piranhas Slot Bonus Features
There are three (almost four) bonus rounds to discover in Blazing Piranhas – where do I begin? The Lock & Win bonus is a three-spin feature triggered by hitting six or more coin symbols, whilst the regular free spins are awarded for hitting three or more bonus scatter symbols. The Jackpot Wheel is activated by filling the meter positioned above the reels with a whole pile of coin symbols, whilst the final almost-a-bonus is the Jackpot Lock & Win, triggered by hitting a single star coin during the regular Lock & Win feature.
Lock & Win Feature
In this mode, all regular symbols are removed from the reels leaving only the coin symbol and its funky-coloured counterparts (see the Lock’n’Win Coins section above for details). This is a three-spin feature, meaning you begin the bonus with three spins (or ‘lives’) and lose a life whenever the reels stop with no coin symbols in view. Every spin that does feature a coin will reset your spin counter back to the initial three; therefore, you’ll have to suffer the pain of three dead spins in a row to bomb out of this bonus!
This is probably my favourite part of the game, but its price tag within the bonus buy menu reveals its true worth. This feature costs almost half of what the regular free spins ask for, suggesting that this bonus is probably far less lucrative over the long run. Nevertheless, the ability to unlock additional rows and even collect an instant 5,000x jackpot ensured this feature was the highlight of my time playing Blazing Piranhas.
Jackpot Wheel
Collect an unspecified but almost certainly an enormous amount of coins, and you’ll find yourself looking at the jackpot wheel! You’ll initially be spinning the inner track, which features segments for the MICRO, MINI, and MINOR jackpots, but hitting an arrow segment will level you up to the outside wheel where the MAAJOR and MEGA prizes can be found. The five jackpots are valued as follows:
- MEGA: 5,000x Stake
- MAJOR: 500x Stake
- MINOR: 100x Stake
- MINI: 25x Stake
- MICRO: 15x Stake
Free Spins
Hitting three or more scatter symbols will reward you with this game’s most generous bonus round – at least, that’s what I would assume based on the prices of the various bonus buy options. A three-scatter trigger will offer you the choice of five spins with six wilds, seven spins with five wilds, ten spins with four wilds, or 12 spins with three wilds.
If you are lucky enough to hit four triggering symbols, then the spin counts are upgraded to between 10 and 24 free spins, whilst a maximum five-scatter trigger will get you anywhere from 15 to 36 free spins, depending on your appetite for risk!
The number of wilds selected here determines how many such symbols will be positioned around the playfield on each round of the free spins feature. Wilds will move around the board randomly on every free spin – it’s a shame that they aren’t sticky, but I guess you can’t have everything!
Bonus Buy
Wow, this has been a long one! Wrapping things up at last, it’s time for just a quick word regarding the bonus buy facility – there are four options, although the latter three are all so close to one another that it really did raise my eyebrows! The Lock & Win and Jackpot Lock & Win are especially, well, ridiculous.
I believe this suggests that almost every Lock & Win bonus is certain to also trigger a Jackpot Lock & Win – I could be wrong, but that’s undoubtedly what these numbers would suggest.
- Free Spins Feature (52.5x Bet)
- Lock’n’Win Feature (30.93x Bet)
- Jackpot Lock’n’Win Feature (31.7x Bet)
- Jackpot Wheel (31.25x Bet)
Pros
- Plenty of special features to look forward to – the base game isn’t too bad either!
- The ability to select how many wilds and spins you want in the free spins bonus ensures that this machine should appeal to both high and low-variance slot fans.
Cons
- That jackpot meter is going to take forever to fill, which is a bit weird considering that you can purchase the wheel for only 31.25x your total bet!
- No mention on the paytable of what happens if the piranha catches its prey, although I’m not entirely certain that I want to know!
Final Thoughts
This isn’t the first machine I have reviewed from Pear Fiction Studios, but it’s almost certainly the first I will remember long into the future! This is a great-looking slot that has a fantastic variety of special features and bonus rounds, but I can’t help but feel the studio has spread itself a little too thin on this occasion. I’d still recommend that you give this game a try though – it’s more fun than it probably should be!
Decent
- Game Types:
- Bonus Buy Slots
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