Fire Hopper is a cute, unassuming looking game that pleasantly surprised us. On the one hand, it probably shouldn’t have since it’s from Push Gaming, the studio that helped define the grid slot genre with their seminal release Jammin’ Jars. On the other hand, after being somewhat let down by Jammin’ Jars 2 (though, in all fairness, still a big hit for the studio), Fire Hopper impressed by how much fun it was to play. Not only are there plenty of good times to be found in Fire Hopper, there is also plenty of potential up for grabs for lucky players. You’d have to class the player in this clip as lucky indeed after coaxing out some of the best of what Fire Hopper has to offer.
First, a few technical details, such as the fact Fire Hopper is a 7×7 grid slot forming clusters of matching symbols to trigger wins. Five or more identical symbols next to each other constitute a cluster which then launches a cascade feature. Pretty standard stuff, but where the innovation comes in is when the Frog and special symbols interact. In part, this is because when the Wild Frog symbol leaps from Firefly to Firefly, it leaves a Golden Wild Frog version of itself behind and increases its own win multiplier. What bigs this process up is that in free spins, these newly created Golden Wilds take on the progressive multiplier from the original Wild Frog, leading to all sorts of crazed lily pad shenanigans.
The Frog also hops onto bonus symbols when they are in view, which is what happens here to win 7 free spins. The weird thing about them is virtually every free spin ends up being pretty good, though it’s not until the sixth spin in this epic round of free spins when things get real. The lucky Russian player lands 3 neighbouring Golden Frogs which then triple-team 4 adjacent orange flower symbols one after the other for a tidy 4,368x. Few would have complained if their good luck had cashed out there. However, the seventh spin wasn’t done, dishing up another 3 wilds next to 5 red flower symbols, boosting its original win value of 6x up to a nuts 24,480x like it was nothing.
With that final epic spin in the bag, the round ends up being worth 298,420 Rubles, or around €3,583 – from the equivalent of a 12c EUR spin which is not bad at all. Numerically minded readers might be interested to know that the 29,8420x the stake win achieved here leaves room for someone else to tap the game’s full 50,000x at some stage in the future. Not saying it’ll be easy, absolutely far from it, but when a few multiplying frogs land in the right place at the right time in Fire Hopper, it feels like just about anything could happen in this pond.
