Castle of Fire

Castle of Fire: Slot Overview

Gear up for some warmth players because we are heading to a fortified location named Castle of Fire from software provider Pragmatic Play. It wasn't long ago we were dodging smouldering bison in Fire Stampede, now it's an entire realm that appears to be in flames. It's not all ash and cinders around there, though. On the gaming side of the coin, Castle of Fire uses mystery symbols with an intriguing split symbol element and free spins where landed mystery symbols lock in position for the duration.

Suspend reality for a moment when choosing to enter Castle of Fire. This is a fantasy-themed world populated by a flaming-haired character and glowing eye animal types. For the base game, the action is held on a vast, bubbling, fiery wasteland, with the castle of the title sitting on a rocky mountain to the right side of the vista. Quite an impressive castle it is, too, and Castle of Fire, in general, is an impressive-looking game. Its absorbing fantasy spirit is expressed through eye-catching optics, swirls of flame-cut scenes, and equally catchy sonics.

When ready to light up, Castle of Fire accepts stakes of 20 c to $/€240 per spin and offers a bonus buy function for cutting past the base game to go straight to free spins. Math model-wise, Castle of Fire is highly volatile, getting a 5 out of 5 rating in this regard, and has a default RTP of 96.01%. Its gaming space is a 6-reel, 3-row grid which looks as though it has been stretched vertically to make it look taller, awarding wins for landing matching symbols on 3 adjacent reels or more from the leftmost reel, meaning 729 ways to win are available.

Glowing rune pieces of stone inscribed with 10 to A card ranks are the low pay symbols, while the high pays are a potion bottle, ring, crown, wolf, panther, and character symbol. Hitting a 6-of-a-kind royals win pays 2.5 to 3 times the bet, or 3.5 to 8 times the bet is paid for a 6 premium symbol result. Don't be waiting around for wilds to help link winning ways since Castle of Fire does not have any.

Castle of Fire: Slot Features

Castle of Fire's features are mystery symbols that are a lot more exciting than they often are, free spins where mystery symbols are sticky, and a bonus buy.

Mystery Symbols

Mystery symbols appear on all reels. When mystery symbols land, they all reveal the same random paying symbol except for scatters. When mystery symbols perform a reveal, they transform into 1, 2, or 3 instances of the same paying symbol, potentially increasing the number of ways to win.

Free Spins

In the base game, hitting 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols awards 2x, 15x, 100x or 500x the bet plus 12 free spins. The juicy thing about Castle of Fire's free spins is that when mystery symbols land, they lock to the position they hit on until the round of free spins ends. After each free spin, all mystery symbols in view transform into 1, 2, or 3 instances of the same random regular pay symbol. Stack 'em as quickly as you can because free spins cannot be retriggered.

Buy Free Spins

By paying 100x the total bet, players can buy a game round guaranteeing 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters land. The RTP when buying free spins is 96.06%.

Castle of Fire: Slot Verdict

Castle of Fire's list of features isn't exactly bursting at the seams, and the extras are a little on the simplistic side, but they are clever. The biggie is mystery symbols that reveal split symbols rather than single symbols - you may wonder why this excellent combination of actions hasn't seen greater use until now. While mystery symbols have their place in the base game, it's in free spins where they, and Castle of Fire as a whole, really get the chance to spark up and do something interesting.

In free spins, the way mystery symbols can start stacking up on the grid, leading to repeat wins, brought back memories of Push Gaming's slot Mystery Museum. Not because the two slots function in the exact same way or anything along those lines. More the look of the mystery symbols and the sense of mysterious anticipation which builds before each free spin. This effect is amplified when you've got sticky mystery symbols building up towards the left side of the grid, like reels on 1 and 2, transforming every free spin into a win spin. That's pretty neat, and the gameplay makes a solid match to the high-quality fantastical graphics. The final follow-through is maximum winning potential of 8,000x the bet. Hit this ceiling amount, and Castle of Fire's win cap moves in to spray water on the proceedings.

When you think about it, it's pretty phenomenal how Pragmatic Play manages to create so many games, so much more than a lot of its competitors. Even more phenomenal is how many of the games they drop are of rock-solid quality. Not all of them, of course; there are a number of throwaways or whatever in there for sure, but others spring off the line like Castle of Fire, being clever, effective, and straight fun to play.