I’ve only come across Mancala Gaming recently, and most of the slots I have played until now have been “classic” slots with little in the way of special features and bonus rounds. Those games are a little before my time, so I was keen to find out what these guys can do when they try their hand at a “real” modern online slot machine. Their Fruit Factory slot game looks to fit the bill and features 40 fixed pay lines with a maximum win of 4,820x your bet. The RTP is set at 95%, which seems to be the standard for this developer. That’s one per cent short of the industry standard, which may result in you getting less play time for the same amount of money, something you should factor in when deciding on the game you will play.
Fruit Factory online slot uses a 5×5 reel set, much larger than the 5×3 setup used by most other games. With such a big playfield, the 40 pay lines do not cover as many possible combinations as you might expect. A special bonus round switches things up by using a cluster wins style payout mechanic, which makes for a fun contrast between the two styles of play. There is also a feature buy option, several special symbols with varying results, and a connected wilds feature separate from the main “fruity mix” bonus round.
Slots are random games of chance, but I usually find most titles to be much more fun if I understand the way things work before playing for real money. Our free demo slot of Fruit Factory, available below, makes it easy to do this yourself:
| Provider | Mancala Gaming |
| Reels | 5 |
| Rows | 5 |
| Paylines | 40 |
| Bonus Rounds | 1 |
| Bet Range | 0.40 - 36 |
| Volatility | High |
| Max Win | 4,820x |
| Bonus Buy | Yes |
| RTP | 95.00% |
| Our Rating | 7.3 |
Fruit Factory Slot Casino Bonuses
Fruit Factory Slot Free Play
Loading...
Latest Online Slots
New
Demo & Review
New
Demo & Review
New
Demo & Review
New
Demo & Review
New
Demo & Review
New
Demo & Review
New
Demo & Review
New
Demo & Review
New
Demo & Review
New
Demo & Review
Fruit Factory Slot Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols
You might have expected slot developers to get bored with creating fruit-themed online slots by now, but as this title proves, that is yet to happen! Even just this one developer, Mancala Gaming, has more than half a dozen different fruit-themed games in its portfolio. Fruit Factory is an entirely different proposition to Mancala’s other fruity slots such as Hot Fruits on Fire and Hot Fruits on Ice; whilst those games were both “classic” games with limited feature sets and tiny playfields, Fruit Factory is a fully-fledged modern game with enough features to create the world’s most enormous smoothie. So far, so good – but how does it pay and play?!
Let’s start with the main paytable – the highest-paying symbol is the watermelon, although it looks more like a green blob with a smiley face, if I’m honest! It pays 10x your stake for a full line of five-of-a-kind, much higher than the 3x paid by the second-placed peach symbol. After this, you have an orange at 2x for all five and then a bunch of low-value fruits, which will only return your stake for a full pay line. The cluster pays paytable seems even more confusing – here, the watermelon tops out at 2.5x for the maximum cluster of 20 matching symbols.
That seems backwards, considering that the cluster pays prizes are only paid during the bonus rounds and so will only make up a small portion of your overall playtime. The confusion is compounded by the fact that each symbol has a prize for every smaller cluster size until you get to just five symbols, suggesting that combinations of 20 symbols would be extremely rare. I played a bunch of bonus rounds and observed that it was common to hit several winning clusters on every free spin, but even the combined total of these multiple clusters still didn’t add up to very much. It seems that the regular paytables are not where the big money lies in Fruit Factory online slot!
I couldn’t find a 100% reliable source for the minimum/maximum stakes available in Fruit Factory. Still, my experience of Mancala’s other slots suggests that the numbers shown in the demo mode would translate to a minimum bet of €0.40 and a maximum of €36.00 when playing the game in Euros.
Base Game & Modifiers
We are yet to find the big prizes in Fruit Factory online slot, so I think it’s about time we went on a mission to find them, don’t you? Let’s start with the base game, which uses a large 5×5 grid to host its 40 fixed pay lines. Winnings are paid for hitting three or more matching symbols on a pay line, and whilst the amounts shown on the paytable do not sound like very much, they are higher than the winnings awarded by the cluster pays setup in the bonus game. If neither of the paytables seems to offer anything special, then exactly where are the big prizes? We may find some clues if we investigate the many base game features.
Money Box Symbols
The money box scatters appear on reels one through four and award instant cash prizes of 3x, 5x, or 7x your stake for the small, medium, and large-sized boxes, respectively. The money box symbols appear on reels one through four, making the largest possible combination of four large boxes for a total of 28x your bet. To go higher, you’re going to need the next symbol too.
Money Collector Symbol
This symbol appears only on reel five but is worthless if it happens to land when there are no money box symbols on reels one through four. Frustratingly, that seems to happen quite a lot in my experience!
If you manage to land a money collector as at least one money box, then the prizes at the same time the boxes become random, and whilst the paytable does not state this explicitly, it appears that more boxes mean bigger prizes in those boxes as well. For reference, my best result from this was a win just shy of 100x my bet, resulting from a combination of multiple large money boxes and the money collector symbol at the same time.
Connected Wilds Feature
The paytable mentions that “connecting wilds” appear only on reels one, three, and five, but as far as I can tell, there are no other wild symbols apart from these. Therefore, I think a more accurate description is that wilds appear only on reels one, three, and five, and therefore you won’t see them listed in the paytable – it’s impossible to hit even three of them on a pay line.
If you hit a single wild on a spin, then it will behave as a regular substitution symbol, but two or three of them can potentially activate the “Connected Wilds” feature. The strange part about this is that the feature will be blocked if there are any special features between the wilds on reels two and four, including money boxes or scatter symbols.
Provided there are no such special symbols in the way; a path will be drawn between each of the wild symbols, itself made up of additional wilds. Ideally, you want to get a wild on reels one and five simultaneously, which will cause a full connecting path of wilds to appear between the two symbols. My best result from this feature was again short of 100x my bet – it didn’t seem to matter where the wilds landed; I still could not manage to win on a large number of pay lines at the same time.
Fruit Factory Slot Free Spins Feature
The Fruity Mix feature is triggered when five “MIX” symbols appear on a single spin, which will swap out the grid for an alternative version that includes both cluster-pays and cascading wins through a “fruit smasher”.
The “fruit smasher” will position itself at the beginning of each of your ten free spins, selecting a small area of the grid where winning fruits will be squashed. If you are lucky enough to hit winning combinations in the designated areas, then the fruits will be added to the counters, which are now dotted around both edges of the reel set, and filling any of these meters will immediately award a special prize:
- Lemon Juice – Awards an additional 3 free spins
- Banana Juice – Awards an extra 4 free spins
- Plum Juice – Increases the size of the “fruit smash area” by one spot
- Grape Juice – Increases the size of the “fruit smash area” by two spots
- Orange Juice – Grants two extra free spins and a 2x multiplier
- Peach Juice – Grants three additional free spins and a 3x multiplier
- Watermelon Juice – Awards an instant cash prize of 125x your stake
You will need to smash seven of the above fruits to receive the corresponding prize, and it is possible to win any or all the juice prizes in a single bonus round. You will need to be lucky, though – I only collected two in a single bonus after more than two dozen bonus rounds!
Bonus Buy
Finally, if it is permitted in your jurisdiction, then you can buy your way straight to the “Fruity Mix” feature for just 50x your normal stake; that must be a bargain because this is by far the most profitable section of the game.
Whilst it isn’t explicitly stated, I would be willing to bet that if you ONLY play this game using the bonus buy option, then the RTP will be significantly higher than if you were playing it normally.
Fruit Factory Slot Review Final Thoughts
I have mixed feelings about Fruit Factory online slot – I wanted to enjoy this game as I’ve been impressed by the presentation of the previous Mancala games I have tried. Still, in the end, I could not escape my feelings of disappointment after playing the game for more than a thousand spins.
There are some excellent ideas here, including a handful of original ones, but the package doesn’t quite work as a whole. The Fruity Mix feature seems far more profitable than all of the other features included in the game, and if you have the option of using the bonus buy feature, then I think that is quite a bargain in this slot.
Not made an account yet? Register here to join the conversation.
Log in to share your thoughts