Fangs & Fire

Fangs & Fire: Slot Overview

Hopefully, your virtual passport is up to date, players, because we're visiting the Far East in software provider Play'n GO's online slot Fangs & Fire. You don't need us to tell you the popularity of this venerable slot genre; we'd only very recently reviewed another slot in this style from this very developer in the form of Rings of Prosperity. However, while the theme might be a common one, Play'n GO has injected a number of creative features into Fangs & Fire to help the game forge wins and sling coins at gamblers in ways they might not have seen before.

Fangs & Fire produces a pleasant sensorial reaction via tasteful visuals that represent the subject matter in an artistic way. To be sure, there are dragons, tigers, lanterns, and more, but Fangs & Fire manages not to go overboard with Asian slot cliches. In this respect, the game has visual links with Rings of Prosperity, except a bright sunny day has been switched for a moody, greyed sky one, with fast-moving clouds zipping around the screen as if a storm is brewing. The music is less exceptional, but it makes for a fitting aural soundscape to go with the optics.

In most phases, Fangs & Fire plays out on a classic 5x3 grid, serving up 243 ways to win in the base game. Betting is straightforward: players pick a coin value between $/€0.01 and $/€4, with 25 coins locked in per spin. That makes for a total bet range of $/€0.25 up to $/€100. As for volatility, Fangs & Fire doesn't mess around. It's rated a full 10/10, putting it at the highest end of the scale. The best RTP setup clocks in at 96.36%, though operators can choose from four lower settings as well.

Asian fonted 10-A card ranks are the lower paying symbols, awarding 15 coins for 5 OAK winning combinations, while the highs are a bracelet, teapot, flower, fan, and lantern, worth 30 coins for 5 OAK. Substitutions do not occur since Fangs & Fire does not have a wild symbol.

Fangs & Fire: Slot Features

Fangs & Fire does introduce Play'n GO's Link'n GO feature, which creates wins in the base game as well as in all three bonus rounds - the Prowler Bonus, Serpent Bonus, and the Serpent and Prowler Bonus. A Celestial Gong feature is linked to the Link'n GO, too. During bonus rounds, gongs are sticky. In addition, the state of the tiger, gong, and dragon on top of the reels is purely cosmetic.

Link'n GO

The Link'n GO is triggered when two or more gong symbols create an uninterrupted horizontal line on the reels. Each gong symbol reveals a number or an arrow. Each arrow increases the value of the line's leftmost gong before revealing the number 0. The value on a single gong can be 0-10, 15, 20, 25, or 40. The number created by a line of gongs determines the number of coins awarded.

Celestial Gong Bonus

The Celestial Gong bonus may randomly trigger when there is at least one gong on the grid, but no payway wins occur, and neither the Link'n GO nor any bonus round is triggered. A random number of 3 to 10 gong symbols gets added to the grid to potentially form a Link'n GO win.

Prowler Bonus

Landing 3 or more Prowler scatters triggers the Prowler Bonus, and players get 3 respins on a 5x3 grid. Each position can land either a gong or an empty space. Landing a gong resets the respins counter. When the round ends, gongs form wins according to the Link'n GO rules. This bonus can randomly trigger by landing 1 or 2 Prowler scatters and no Serpent scatters are in view in the base game.

Serpent Bonus

The Serpent bonus triggers when 3 or more Serpent scatters hit. Players get 1 spin on a 5x7 grid, where each position lands either a gong or an empty space. Gongs form wins according to the Link'n GO rules, and the feature can randomly trigger by landing 1 or 2 Serpent scatters, and no Prowler scatters are visible in the main game.

Serpent and Prowler Bonus

This feature is triggered by landing a combination of 5 Serpent and Prowler scatters. It's played on a 5x7 grid, and players get 3 respins that land either gongs or blanks in each position. Landing a gong resets the spins. At the start of the round, only the bottom 3 rows are unlocked. The other 4 rows get unlocked by landing a total of 6, 9, 14, or 19 gongs on active rows. Landing 30 gongs on unlocked awards an additional Mythical Prize valued at 5,000x the bet. The bonus ends when spins run out or when the reels are filled with 35 gongs. Then the gongs in view form Link'n GO wins. This bonus can be triggered by landing both 1 or 2 Prowler scatters and 1 or 2 Serpent scatters in the base game.

Fangs & Fire: Slot Verdict

It might not look very special at first, but scratch a bit deeper and Fangs & Fire offers some unusual mechanics to experiment with. Slots that land a string of numbers to create a bet multiplier have popped up in the past, though they are rare, and Fangs & Fire's system is quite different. Instead of focusing everything on a single line, the way games like Mega Money Machine or Easy Gold do, Fangs & Fire incorporates lines of numbers on a full-size gaming grid, quite ingeniously via the horizontally connected gong symbols, peppering Fangs & Fire throughout its various phases.

The bonus phases are quite clever too, with the Serpent feature the one which triggered most frequently, by a long shot. There is a chance that landing 1 or 2 scatters may activate a bonus, and this tease element is used a lot, even if it didn't lead to a lot of actual triggers. The Prowler round can be a real tantaliser, and the sensations of anticipation may be quite different to a regular hit coins and hold them event, since adjacent gong placement is crucial to forming the biggest number possible. Two or three gongs in a row were pretty common; four or five gongs making a win was exceptionally tough to achieve, to the point of not happening, no matter the phase.

Considering Fangs & Fire is technically able to award up to 1.5 million coins (or 60,000x the bet), those gongs have the theoretical ability to forge giant figures. This being a slot, from Play'n GO, maybe they will, maybe they won't, but either way, Asian slot enthusiasts, or any gambler really that likes to try new things, may be intrigued by Fangs & Fire's singular way of going about business.