Firewins Factory

Firewins Factory: Slot Overview

Quick question: what's better for a money-motivated industrialist than owning a factory and getting rich off the backs of the workers' blood, sweat, and toil? Why, employing minion-like characters to do the same amount of work for zero pay, meaning even more wedge winds its way up in their pocket, of course. That is unless the workers are prone to causing explosions and in Relax Gaming's online slot Firewins Factory, the more detonations, the merrier, as they lead to spreading wilds, not to mention incrementing a potentially useful win multiplier.

The factory in Firewins Factory is a brick-and-tile affair that looks like it might have been in operation since the 19th century. As alluded to, any human workers have all been sacked, replaced by critters of various shapes and colours. Picture Willy Wonka's chocolate factory full of Oompa Loompas or Gru's banana-loving coterie of Minions, and you'll have a good idea of what to expect in Firewins Factory.

Plonked on the factory floor is a 6x6 gaming grid which uses a connected ways system to create wins. Winning combinations begin on the leftmost reel and include matching symbols on at least 3 adjacent reels, connected horizontally or diagonally, as seen before in Relax Gaming's Mega Heist and Wild Yield. Here, players get 950 ways to win in a highly volatile slot with an RTP of 96.19%. The stake levels are unusual at $/€0.10 to $/€50 per spin.

All symbols part of a winning combination are removed from the reels. Spaces created are filled by symbols dropping downwards, and cascades continue like this till no new win appears. The low pays in Firewins Factory are diamonds, clubs, spades, and hearts, all paying 0.4x the bet for a 6 OAK hit. For highs, these are made up of 4 worker characters and a twirly moustachioed capitalist, paying 0.5 to 1 times the bet for a 6-of-a-kind connected way. No less than 6 types of wild symbols appear in Firewins Factory - 5 exploding ones, plus 1 regular. Wilds pay 1x the bet for 6 OAK and also substitute for any regular pay symbol.

Firewins Factory: Slot Features

Blowing stuff up is the order of the day in Firewins Factory, which does this using Explosive Wilds of various types. Complementing the detonation are cascading wins, a rising win multiplier that is persistent during the free spins round, a second chance, plus two feature buys.

Explosive Wilds

When an Explosive Wild is part of a winning combination, it spreads wilds to other symbols. There are 5 types of Explosive Wilds, sending wilds in different directions onto different parts of the board. Occasionally, a super explosion may occur, making wilds spread wider. When an Explosive Wild is part of a winning combination, the multiplier increases by +1. In the base game, the multiplier resets for the next spin.

• Cross Wild - spreads wilds to the symbols above, below, left, and right of itself.
• Diagonal Cross Wild - spreads wilds to the top left and top right, as well as the bottom left and bottom right of itself.
• Vertical Wild - spreads wilds above and below itself.
• Horizontal Wild - spreads wilds to the left and right of itself.
• Random Spread Wild - spreads 3 to 8 wilds to random positions.

Second Chance

When unused wilds are in view and no more wins are possible, a worker character may activate them, causing an explosion to all wilds' adjacent symbols. This makes space for symbols to drop in.

Free Spins

Landing at least 3 scatter symbols triggers 8 free spins. Each additional triggering scatter grants +1 extra free spin. During free spins, the multiplier persists between spins and increases every time an explosive wild is part of a winning combination.

Feature Buys

Two feature buys are up for grabs in Firewins Factory. One is the random feature for 65x, which awards 8-15 free spins (RTP 96.56%); the other is the super feature, costing 130x and awarding 15 free spins (RTP 96.58%).

Firewins Factory: Slot Verdict

Before diving into Firewins Factory's mechanical workings, a quick word on the theme. Was Firewins Factory brought about by Relax Gaming being inspired by Minion-style characters, or is there a deeper societal critique going on here? As in, it's great for a captain of industry to harness the power of the peon masses in their factories to make bucket loads of profit, but wouldn't it be even better (for them) if they could harness the power of AI, robots, or in this case minions to do the heavy lifting. Since they wouldn't have to pay them like people, it would mean even more profit in their pocket. Who cares if the human workers become destitute on the street, begging for scraps when their former paymasters can buy that 12th beach house, another Bugatti - with teal trim this time, or more ivory back scratchers?

In Firewins Factory, it's wilds you want to harness, exploding ones too, and there is a variety of ways these symbols can pop and spread. It's a pretty cool feature, not one of Relax Gaming's mind-melting wonders, but one that can certainly be effective. It would have been nice to see them in action more frequently in the base game, though. What may help is the win multiplier, and free spins are your best bet for accumulating a useful value. The review wasn't exactly overflowing with pyrotechnics, so brace for a potentially tough session, but also be heartened by the game's 20,000x the bet max win, so thrill rides are a definite possibility. This is a Relax Gaming production, after all, and the studio's games have proven time and time again that they can step up and perform.

All in all, Firewins Factory is a fine slot with positive gaming to offer online gamblers. However, since Money Train 4 (at the time of writing, at least), Relax Gaming's releases have been a little bit patchy. Not bad by any means, as the overall quality is on the whole higher than much of the competition, but in saying that, it would be nice to see other slots from the studio which don't have the words 'Money' or 'Train' in the title step up, including Firewins Factory.