Red Hot Wild

First thing to note with this game is that it's rather picky about what browser you use... my current favourite is Opera Chromium, a rebuild of the old Opera created from the Chrome open source project but despite this the game refuses to run and suggests I use Chrome or Firefox instead. Because of this I thought I would test it using Microsofts new Windows 10 Edge browser as well and found it that to be incompatible as well.

With that out the way, I will admit that this type of classic 3 reel game gives me a huge burst of nostalgia! This slot is as classic as they come with cherries, lemons, plums and melons as well as bars, bells and "7"s filling up the reels - a reel blast from the past.

If you haven't played many three reel games before you might not be aware that they work very differently to the five reel video slots that dominate on-line gaming today. Each symbol on the reels is "weighted" rather than the random stop mechanic used in a five reel game, the highest paying symbols have the lowest weight attached to them and so will appear on the paylines less often than the lower paying, higher weighted symbols.

A great twist has been added in "Red Hot Wild" that takes advantage of this alternative arrangement - you can choose the symbol you wish to act as the games wild, and the more often that symbol appears on the reels the lower the multiplier is attached to it. This works really well, you can make the top paying BARs or 7s the wild and receive a large multiplier, though you won't get a line of them very often, or make one of the fruits wild for a lower multiplier that you'll receive much more frequently. Simple but brilliant.

Another trick to expect is that often you will see the symbol you wanted appearing just above (or below) the payline where you needed it, this is called a "near miss" and actually banned on gaming machines in some parts of the world.

Overall the action might be a bit simplistic for some players but I remember playing these games for pennies as a child and still enjoy a few spins on this type of game today - albeit with much higher stakes!