Birds on a Wire is a 5 reels video slot with 17 pay-lines which runs on Thunderkick software platform. Standard reels are replaced with 3 rows of 5 animated and colorful birds of different shapes and sizes, sitting on electric lines against the backdrop of fields, sky and trees. Once you spin the reels you move to another section of lines where 15 more birds settle. Give this slot a go here for free or visit Thunderkick listed casinos to play for real money.
Before you start playing with these attention grabbing birds, make sure to adjust your bet. If you click on "bet" button, available wagers will open across the screen, and all you need to do is pick and click on the bet you wish to place. The lowest wager is 0.10 and the highest one is 100. Once you set your bet you click "Spin" which will start turning the reels, and "auto-play" option will spin the reels without interruption for a preset number of times.
This innovative and fun video slot is fairly simple but it still has some interesting features to offer. These features include dropping symbols, a wild symbol, a bonus symbol, high voltage multipliers, and inwinity spin.
Dropping symbols occur in the base game and the free spins each time you hit a winning combo. The birds involved in this combo will get electrocuted into oblivion and other birds will alight in their place. Once this bird switch has been made, new combos will become possible, and with each consecutive win you hit, a multiplier will increase up to 5x.
The wild symbol in the game is a big, pear-shaped black bird with yellow stripes. It acts as a substitution for any symbol except the bonus symbol.
The bonus symbol is shown in the form of a cardboard box with a couple of yellow eyes visible. Once you hit three or more of these on the reels, a cat will come out and scare away the birds to another set of lines. Here, you will be awarded with 10 free spins. Any additional symbol you hit will grant you 2 additional spins and they can go up to 34.
High voltage multipliers increase by one level for each win on a drop. Multiplier levels in the base game are 1x, 2x, 3x and 5x, whereas in the bonus game levels go 4x, 8x, 12x and 20x.
Inwinity spin is triggered once all free spins in a bonus game have been played. Once activated, the reels in the game will continue to spin until it hits a winning combination.
Game Play
Bet: Choose the bet you wish to make.
Spin: Start the game.
Auto Play: Turn the reels without interruption for a preset number of times.
Thunderkick have produced a bunch of games now with "interesting" variations on traditional symbols such as the happy, music playing skulls in Esqueleto Explosivo and the russian dolls in Babushka, so this game "Birds on a Wire" seems right up their street. Rather than just a set of spinning reels, you get fifteen random birds flying onto the screen and settling on ... well, wires of course. The rolling reels mechanic is used yet again here with an ascending multiplier up to 5x for consecutive wins, a setup which seems to be used a lot at the moment especially by Thunderkick.
There's 17 fixed paylines, a strange number until recently but one that Thunderkick seems particularly fond of using. Despite the fixed paylines mean you can choose a betsize anywhere from 0.10 up to 100.00 which will suit players who like to play all of the lines very well, but not so much those that like to play just a single line or some other strange setup in order to take the variance of their favourite games into stratospheric territory.
Whilst the graphics are cute, the sound reasonably appealing and the presentation typically high Thunderkick quality the wins leave something to be desired, at least in the base game. The free spins mode improves things somewhat with additional multipliers all the way up to 20x and the opportunity to win additional free spins quite easily as you only need a single scatter to add a couple of spins, but I've still struggled to achieve a decent win after a lot of play and in fact I can only recall a couple of hits above 100x my stake since I first played the game.
Thunderkick have done a handful of decent games so far, my favourite being the excellent "Arcader", but that game had several features and many wins of achieving a big win. Birds on a wire is quite similar in many ways but seems like a less developed version of that concept and for that reason I won't be bothering playing this one again in the future except for maybe when it comes up in the Videoslots battles!