Phoenix Sun Slot

Phoenix Sun is one of the newest video slot powered by Quickspin software provider. I first tried this game out when I got some free spins on it from different online casinos. But from those free spins I did not win anything at all, so I stay away from it.

I came back to it a couple of days ago while I was playing with some reload bonus. I decided to give it a chance to impress me. This game starts with a 3x5 reel grid and 234 pay ways. The phoenix rising feature can expand the game to as much as 6x5 reel grid with up to total 7776 pay ways. When I first saw that I was surprised to see that kind of game from Quickspin provider. And yes I think it is quite unique from the others.

Any phoenix wild symbols on a winning pay line trigger the phoenix rising respins. Every wild symbol will remove 3 random tiles from the cover above the 3x5 grid and trigger a respin with the expanded reel layout. The game will respin until no more wilds appear in a winning combination or free spins is won. Free spins is won when 5 phoenix wild symbols have been collected in a game round. Free spins is played at full reel grid with 7776 pay ways.

While I was playing it, I was a little bit dissapointed. The main game is still quite boring even if there are two different wild symbols. Sometimes I was confused which wild symbol open more pay ways. But after some minutes of playing it I understand the game completely.
The payouts in main game are really small, I never got any bigger win than x5 my bet. So I do not think I will play it more in the future. It is hard to trigger free spins too, I never got more than 2 phoenix wilds in a row from this game. So I can not imagine how much should I play it to collect 5 phoenix wild symbols. My ratio 6 stars.

Currently, there are only a few new games that utilise a 5-reels 6-rows play area format, but it seems that more and more new games are following this trend now, much to my dislike. All the symbols in play become much smaller, the play area becomes more crowded and cluttered, and seeing what win on which payline is almost impossible now. All you know is that you've got a win, never mind on which payline it falls on, because the active paylines are no longer confined to the usual norm of 9, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40 or 50 lines. We are now looking at games with over 1000 paylines. In the case of this new game from Quickspin, Phoenix Sun, the paylines start with 243 in the base game and goes up to an incredible 7,776 paylines in the Free Spins game! Oh gees! I've just got a 5-of-a-kind win on line 7,713! Hehehe.

Before you start wondering how the heck that win was on payline 7,713, let me say it again. The base game plays with 5-reels and 3-rows, as usual, so that makes it a 243-paylines game. During the free spins, the full portion of the upper grid play area are opened up, making it a 5-reels and 6-rows game, so a win can happen on payline 7,776. Hmm, you can close your jaw now, hehehe. Well, as much as it looks interesting and fun to play, I'm not one who is attracted by it all. My preference is still the good old 5-reels 3-rows format. Why? Play the game and see how difficult it can be to get a 5-of-a-kind win in the Free Spins game. The symbols would be scattered all over the place, over 6 rows, instead of just 3 rows. That's no fun for me!

There are 2 Wild symbols in the game. One is the normal symbol with the word 'Wild'. The other Wild has the Phoenix symbol on it. This is the more important Wild symbol to get, because it can open up the upper portions of the grid, or play area. Each Phoenix Wild symbol in a winning combination removes 3 random symbols from the upper grid, 1 Respin is awarded, and the symbol gets collected into the Phoenix counter on the left hand side of the screen. Getting 5 Phoenix symbols award a 8 free spins game with 7,776-ways to win. Non-winning Phoenix symbols do not get collected. The normal Wild symbol doesn't do anything else but only to substitute for other symbols except for the Phoenix symbol. Both Wild symbols do not pay anything for themselves, do not double any wins, do not become stacked or expanded, and are therefore still dumb Wild symbols. There are no Scatter symbols in the game either.

As for the other symbols in the game, the Pharaoh pays 4x the total bet, yes, only 4x, the Queen pays 3x, and the others pay from 2.4x down to 0,8x the total bet for 5 of each kind. Imagine getting 5 same symbols on a winning payline and it pays only 0.8x or 80% of your total bet amount! Sheesh! How much lower can designers value these symbols? So, what do you make of this paytable then? To me, it's a blardy damn low paytable, designed to slowly eat you up alive! 7,776-ways to win or not.

There may be many players who may get very excited with the 7,776 ways to win ploy, but not me. I've played Phoenix Sun only once, but that was enough to tell me the sort of gameplay to expect from it. Excitement only happens because of its novelty, from something relatively new and different from the other games, but how many players really consider the truth behind the paytable? Almost none, or only the knowledgeable ones would. My advice is, be very aware of what this game can do. Do not be overwhelmed with its features and number of ways to win. They are very deceiving indeed! Yes, decent wins can be expected of course, ranging from 30x to 50x, but getting bigger wins than these would come very rarely. For me, the Phoenix Sun came up and went down very quickly.

In my opinion, “Phoenix Sun” is one of the most innovative video slots released during the month of December due to the “Phoenix Rising Respins” feature included by its creator “Quickspin” which, as far as I know, is a unique feature in its kind.

So, the basic structure of this slot is 5 x 3 reels and 243 ways to win, but every time a “Phoenix Wild” symbol appears, it not only serves as a substitute for regular symbols but also throws 3 fireballs on the yellow grid on the top to convert 3 of these tiles into new pieces of reels where more matching symbols can appear during a respin that is granted whenever a Phoenix Wild appears in a winning combination, but the most important part is that if you manage to collect 5 Phoenix Wilds during the same series of respins, then 8 free spins are awarded to you and the whole yellow plate disappears leaving a slot with a new structure of 5 x 6 reels and a total of “7,776 ways to win.”

In this slot symbols usually appear stacked, and with 7,776 ways to win even the lowest paid symbol of the game has the ability to generate a big win.

There is also a conventional wild symbol that helps to reinforce the dynamism of this game both during the base game and during free spins. For its part, the paytable is quite decent considering the essential characteristics of this slot.

According to what I could experience in my first session playing “Phoenix Sun,” I think this is a game where things go pretty normal during the base game, but once triggered the round 8 free spins, excitement levels increase due to the great potential contained in those 7,776 ways to win, although in my case, I never managed to get a total win over 73x my total bet during this round, however, I think it is fair to say that this round can usually be triggered with relative ease.

Personally, I think I had a lot of fun playing this video slot; I had some losing streaks but finally I was able to quit the game with some gains in my balance, so I think I could conclude by saying that “Phoenix Sun” is one of the most interesting video slots I've played during this holiday season and I also think it is a game that definitively deserves a chance.