Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker

Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker: Slot Overview

Breaking stuff is generally a bad thing, right? A broken heart or a broken leg, they leave behind pieces that need to be picked up and put back together. In software provider Stakelogic's grid slot Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker, breaking stuff is actually a good thing, and it's this smashing action that adds variety to a slot offering fairly commonplace features such as free spins with a win multiplier and a Coin based Hold 'N' Win round.

One thing Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker has going for is eye-catching visuals. Stakelogic plunges players into deep jungly territory replete with volcano and Aztec overtones. Things stay fairly placid in the background while the base game is trundling along but ignite into fiery mode when bonus modes such as the Hold 'N' Win are active. It's neatly designed, capped by a toothy, winged, almost tiki-type chap on the left side of the screen, adding further life to the show.

High is the rating given to the game's math model volatility, while the default RTP sits right on 96%. This is the return value when wagering 20 c to $/€100, and the stake increases by 25% when activating the Super Stake betting option. The benefit of having the Super stake switched on is that more scatter symbols are placed on the reels, making it more likely to win free spins.

Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker, as the title gives away, is a cluster paying slot that forms wins when at least 5 identical symbols are connected. Winning symbols are removed, and symbols cascade in to fill vacant spaces, repeating like this till no win forms. The pay symbols are what look to be fire, an eye, a sun, a skull, a mask, a bird, and a jaguar, maybe, awarding 0.2 to 0.6 times the bet for 5 OAK, or 20 to 250 times the bet for 15+ OAK.

Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker: Slot Features

Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker is quite busy in terms of features. The extras include the Cluster Breaker, Multiplier symbols, Coin symbols, Earth Shakers, a Hold 'N' Win round, free spins, super free spins, bonus buys, and more.

Cluster Breaker, Multiplier Symbols and Earth Shaker Feature

The Cluster Breaker mechanic means that when new symbols land (not scatters, Multiplier, or Volcano symbols), they may break into 2, 3, or 4 pieces. Only whole symbols may break, not already broken symbols. Moreover, keep an eye out for the Multiplier symbol, which multiplies the total win. Possible values range from x2 to x100, and when multiple Multiplier symbols land, their values are added together. The Earth shaker feature, meanwhile, can trigger randomly after a spin or cascade. When triggered, 5 to 20 symbols break into 2, 3, or 4 pieces.

Coin Symbols & Hold 'N' Win

Hitting 5 or more Coin symbols triggers the Hold 'N' Win feature. Coin symbols hold a multiplier value and may break into 2, 3, or 4 symbols upon landing. During the Hold 'N' Win, only Coins, Multipliers, and Volcano Power symbols may land on the reels. When there are 5 or more connected Coin symbols, they merge to form a single symbol. The contributing Coin values are combined additively. Each time a new symbol lands, the number of respins resets to 3. In the feature, Multiplier symbols may land as x2, x3, or x5. When landing, they multiply 2 to 10 random Coin symbols. After doing so, the Multiplier symbol disappears from the reels.

Volcano Power Symbols

When the Volcano Power symbol lands and activates the Earth Shaker feature, symbols split. The Volcano Power symbol may only land during the Hold 'N' Win feature to break 2 to 20 random 1x1 Coin symbols into 2, 3, or 4 pieces. Each piece holds the original Coin value.

Free Spins

Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols awards 10, 12, or 20 free spins for Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker's free spins round, respectively. The feature has a global multiplier that starts at x1 and increases with each cascade. The current multiplier multiplies the win and does not reset till the round ends. Retriggers are possible by landing 3 or more bonus symbols to win +5 extra free spins.

Super Free Spins

Landing 2, 3, or 4 scatter symbols and a super scatter symbol triggers 10, 12, or 20 super free spins. Super scatters appear only on the leftmost reel. The rules are basically the same as normal free spins, except if there is no win during a spin or cascade, 1 x Ultimate Earth Shake can happen once per spin. The Ultimate Earth Shaker breaks all 1x1 pay symbols into 2, 3, or 4 symbols.

Bonus Buys

At the bonus buy, players can trigger free spins for 100x the bet, the Hold 'N' Win bonus for 100x the bet, or super free spins for 200x the bet.

Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker: Slot Verdict

It had been a while since a Stakelogic slot had popped up on the review pile, and loading Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker triggered more positive reactions than negative ones, which was nice. It looks a treat, joining the ranks of slots like Pragmatic Play's Tropical Tiki, ELK Studios' Tahiti Gold, or NetEnt's Aloha Cluster Pays, as well as other Aztec-centric releases, having a jungle, exotic, volcano thing going on. Stakelogic has made decent use of the theme to produce an amiable yet fiery environment, then filled it with a lot of features, offering a mix of familiar mechanics with some fresher components to discover.

The main mechanical freshness comes from breaking stuff, more specifically, breaking symbols into pieces, which ain't a bad thing to have in a cluster paying slot. After all, more connected symbols, no matter their size, means bigger payouts, up to a maximum cluster size of 15+. Or, crack Coins down in the Hold 'N' Win feature to jam more of them on the grid and consolidate clusters of them into a parent Coin. Placing aside the symbol breaking for a bit, the rest of Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker was a little on the mid side. Not bad mid, but much of what the game has on offer might be a bit overly familiar for experienced slot heads.

On the other hand, Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker rolls together a lot of elements - a Hold 'N' Win, two free spins bonus rounds, etcetera, in one place. The skin the studio has stretched over the inner machine is appealing, too, as is the 10,000x max win. All in all, Fire and Gold Cluster Breaker was a decent slot, not exactly a must-see, but tidily put together all the same.