Fireborn

Fireborn: Slot Overview

The last time we caught up with Hacksaw Gaming's buds, Backseat Gaming, it was out in the countryside with a farmer who seemed to prefer napping to doing agricultural work. This time, we're about as far away from food cultivation as it gets in the fantasy-themed online slot Fireborn, which is a slot rife with dragons of varying descriptions, possessing varying reel modifying abilities. Modifiers include adding wilds of wild reels to the grid, occasionally with sizable multipliers attached or added - in both the base game and the free spins bonus round where wilds are sticky.

A dry, deserted wasteland greets players at the Fireborn load screen before shifting to an icy wonderland with a castle overlooking the area for the base game. It all looks fine but doesn't tell a story, either on screen or in the game info. Not that it has to, though the lack of personality meant it took a little longer to warm to Fireborn or really want to dive into its world. Although maybe the chill factor came from all the snow in the background. Also, dragons weren't readily apparent for a while either, yet patience is a virtue, as they say, so with a bit of patience (not to mention luck), dragons and their modifier abilities should be hitting soon enough.

They hit on a 5-reel, 5-row gaming grid, with 19 paylines, which is a set-up Backseat Gaming favours, having been used in Commander of Trident as well as the studio's debut Lord Venom. To get involved, players may select stakes of 10 c to $/€100 per spin, and while it doesn't have a FeatureSpins option as such, there is a free spins bonus buy costing 200x the bet. When buying free spins, the return to player is 96.3%, higher than the regular 96.18% RTP. Maybe hold onto your knitting for this, but the volatility has been rated as 'extreme'.

Five rather drab 10-A rock cut card royals are Fireborn's low pay symbols, followed by blue, green, red, and light blue gemmed jewellery as the high pays. Hit a low pay 5 OAK win, and the rewards are 1 to 1.5 times the bet, or 4 to 10 times the bet for a 5 symbol high pay win. Wilds may land on any reel to substitute for any other pay symbols. Should wilds have multipliers attached, they multiply any payline win they are part of. If more than one multiplier wild is part of a win, the values are added together first before being applied. A line of 5 winning wilds is worth 10 times the bet.

Fireborn: Slot Features

Dragons are what you want to see in all phases of play since they do nifty things with wilds and/or multipliers. Good in the base game, better in free spins where wild symbols gain a sticky characteristic.

Dragon Symbols

Fireborn has four types of Dragon symbols. Half are available in both phases of the game, while the other two show up only in free spins. These are the Red, Blue, Green, and Gold Dragon.

• Red Dragon – expands to become a full reel wild, revealing a multiplier of x2, x3, x5, x10, x25, x50, or x100. Lands in the base or bonus game.
• Blue Dragon – breathes fire in one of these directions - up, down, left, or right, transforming the regular symbols it hits into wilds. The Blue Dragon then turns wild. Lands in the base or bonus game.
• Green Dragon – reveals a multiplier of x2, x3, x5, x10, x25, x50, or x100 and adds this to all wilds or wild reels on the grid. Only lands in free spins, and only if there are wilds or wild reels already present.
• Gold Dragon – shoots 1 to 5 fireballs at wilds or wild reels, doubling their multiplier. It can shoot the same or different targets with each shot. Only lands in free spins, and only if there are wilds or wild reels already present.

Free Spins

Scatter symbols appear only in the base game, and hitting 3, 4, or 5 of them awards 10, 12, or 14 free spins, respectively. In free spins, there is a greater chance of landing Red or Blue Dragons than in the base game, plus the Green and Gold Dragons may also appear. In free spins, all wilds and wild reels are sticky until the round ends.

Fireborn: Slot Verdict

Fireborn proved to be quite a roller coaster. For a while, the base game was boring as all heck. Sorry for the language, but it could drag along with little to nothing happening. Even when something did happen, a Red Dragon hit, for example, it still seemed like little more than hot air. Dead spins, rinky dink wins, rained down like ash from an incinerated village. However, every so often, dragons might cause a spike of activity, like a Blue Dragon creating a row of wilds in conjunction with a full reel wild Red Dragon, just to remind you potential is here. Or getting multiple Red Dragons, and so on.

In other words, Fireborn felt like a game that does little a lot of the time, then something neat pops out of nowhere to breathe some coins back into the balance, even push it into positive territory. Let's not forget the extreme volatile rating after all. Everything made a shed load more sense in free spins when wild symbols or wild reels stick until the round ends and might just be graced with enticing multiplier values. That's when you can see how hitting Fireborn's 15,000x the bet winning potential might possibly become a reality.

So far, the four Backseat Gaming releases have been decent enough, but each one has also been a reminder of what a different league big daddy studio Hacksaw Gaming inhabits. There are good ideas in Fireborn, yet they lacked the holistically subtle (or not so subtle) creativity of a slot like Chaos Crew 2, Densho, Benny the Beer, Wanted Dead or a Wild, or, well, a load of them, really. Not meaning to throw shade on Backseat Gaming, though. The studio is up and coming, with plenty of time to hone their craft, and a game like Fireborn certainly shows promise, unleashing brute force features when the beast is exhaling fire.