Red Hot Luck

Feeling lucky, punk? Hopefully so, because we are taking Pragmatic Play’s online slot, Red Hot Luck, for a burn. Red Hot Luck is a new style of game for the studio’s portfolio called PowerPays. We’ve seen PowerWays before, in Yum Yum PowerWays, but Red Hot Luck is something completely different. How it works is that the game has a unique method of awarding points when winning clusters land instead of straight monetary values. When a spin has ended, the number of points in the pot is translated to a cash win. Interesting or bizarre? Hopefully, we’ll work that out by the end.

Set in a desolate land, Red Hot Luck plays on the ‘hot’ side of things by lighting up the place with lava flows, glowing cracks in the ground, and an erupting volcano. With a bit of imagination, it’s possible to picture a lone musician standing on a barren hilltop, wind flowing through their long hair, wailing on their electric guitar, providing one of the lead instruments in Red Hot Luck’s soundtrack. The sights and sounds combination is a bit odd, not bad, but a bit odd, though the music does get pretty darn passionate at points. There is a suspicion the design team wasn’t super into volcanoes, though; that or they weren’t entirely sure how the PowerPays feature would be received, so they didn’t want to throw their best theme ideas at it. Could be totally wrong, but.

Red Hot Luck is a cluster pays slot played on a 7 by 7 game board. Wins are formed when matching symbols land next to each other in horizontal and/or vertical directions. Wins are removed from the board by a tumble mechanic and award a number of points. Points translate to cash wins, as you will see. This particular volcano is a highly volatile one, and it has a default RTP figure of 96.08%. Bet selection goes from 20 c to $/€240 per spin along with the option to buy the free spins round.

Red Hot Luck’s regular pay symbols are J, Q, K, and A card ranks, then a blue, green, and pink gem. Each type of symbol awards points depending on the size of the winning cluster, from 490 to 2,450 points for a 49-matching symbol win. During a spin, including all the tumbles it contains, the points from winning combinations are collected in total. Clicking to the next page on the paytable shows that monetary awards vary from 0.2x the bet for 50-74 total points up to 100x the bet for 10,000 points. No wilds appear in Red Hot Luck to help attain points.

Red Hot Luck: Slot Features

Red Hot Luck revs up its potential luck by mashing together features such as scatters, tumbles, free spins, and a free spins buy.

Scatters

The star symbol is Red Hot Luck’s scatter. It does not disappear during tumbles. When scatters hit, they can have a random multiplier attached. At the end of the spin and all tumbles, multipliers apply to the total win awarded. If 2 or more multipliers are present, they are added to each other. The possible multiplier values are x2 to x500.

Tumble Feature

After winning combinations have been paid, all winning symbols are removed from the grid. The remaining symbols fall downwards, and empty positions are filled by new symbols from above. Tumbling continues until no more winning combinations appear after symbols drop.

Free Spins

Hitting 4 or more scatters triggers 10 free spins. During free spins, whenever a multiplier hits on the screen, and the spin is a win, its value is collected by a total multiplier. For the duration of the round, whenever new scatters with multipliers hit and a win results, the value of the total multiplier is used to multiply the win. Hitting 4 or more scatters on the screen triggers an additional +5 free spins.

Buy Free Spins

For 100 times the bet, players can buy the free spins round, and the RTP for doing so is the same as playing in the standard way at 96.08%.

Red Hot Luck: Slot Verdict

In an industry rife with copycats and casino game makers who are content following the herd, coming up with zilch creatively, it’s nice when something unusual comes along. In Red Hot Luck’s case, Pragmatic Play has dreamt up PowerPays, a sort of scorecard system that translates into money once a spin is complete. Okay, great, but the points system doesn’t do much more than create a middleman between winning clusters and cash. Like, what is the point once the novelty has worn off? There isn’t one really. If PowerPays was removed from Red Hot Luck and clusters awarded money as usual, would anyone notice much, if any, difference?

But then, if we pretend for a moment the PowerPays feature hadn’t been included, then the rest of Red Hot Luck is pretty basic low-frills gaming. Hit clusters, get cash, maybe receive help along the way from the multiplier value on one or more scatters. Those scatter multipliers are like gold dust, too, because without them, cluster values are weak. For example, hitting 49 pink gems awards 2,450 points, which equates to 15x the bet. Not great. However, the total multiplier does persist in free spins, acting much like the total multiplier in Gates of Olympus, and like Gates, Red Hot Luck has a win cap of 5,000x the bet, so it can theoretically turn up the heat.

The problem is a lot of slots that can turn up the heat when the going’s good have more engaging gameplay than Red Hot Luck. Its biggest issue is that the PowerPays idea in its current form doesn’t really add much or anything of value and wouldn’t be missed if it hadn’t been included.