Hot Zone Wild

Hot Zone Wild: Slot Overview

Software provider iSoftBet says goodbye to the pulsars, black holes, and gamma rays of the solar system to bring things back to planet earth for some classically minded fruity fun. What's inspired this talk of transition is Hot Zone Wild, a Vegas-style event that follows in the footsteps of the intergalactic-themed slot Euphoria. Like Euphoria, Hot Zone Wild is a part of iSoftBet's Xtreme Pays Series and provides the chance of building an outsized win multiplier in free spins to go with some impressive winning potential. So, which will win – classic or cosmos? Only one way to find out…

One of the first noticeable changes between Hot Zone Wild and Euphoria is the extra reel iSoftBet has jammed on the game grid. Not only does this add three additional symbols, but it also increases the number of ways to win to 729. The view isn't massively inspiring, being a pretty standard Vegasy game with shimmering lights and a rhythmic house track to tickle the senses. Initially, there wasn't a stack of things about Hot Zone Wild to get massively worked up about, but then again, there was nothing ruining the inquisitive mood either.

Diving deeper into Hot Zone Wild, iSoftBet has helpfully provided a host of figures to get a solid grasp on the game's workings. Firstly, we've got a return value of 95.96%, coming from a highly volatile math model – rated by the maker as 8.5 out of 10. Players get the standard iSoftBet stake range of 20 p/c to $/€20 per spin, with the core goal of landing three to six matching symbols to trigger a payout. Wins hit at a frequency of 32.4%, while the free spins figure activates organically every 223 spins, theoretically speaking.

Hot Zone Wild is packed with 'classic casino symbols', including J-A card royals, cherries, lemons, watermelons, bells, and diamonds. Landing six symbol wins that stretch the width of the grid pay out 0.75 to 1.5 times the bet when made up of card royals, or 5-25x the bet for the other, higher value symbols. Appearing in the Hot Zone (reels 2, 3, 4, and 5) is the wild symbol, which replaces all regular paying symbols to complete winning combinations.

Hot Zone Wild: Slot Features

Euphoria came with a random Euphoria Spin feature in the base game where multipliers could be created. This has been removed for Hot Zone Wild where wild multipliers only appear during the free spins bonus round.

Free Spins

Another symbol which hits in the Hot Zone is the bonus symbol. Landing 3 or 4 bonus symbols awards 6 or 8 free spins, respectively. In free spins, when wild symbols hit, they increase the multiplier of the reel they land on. This happens progressively, so the first wild that lands starts at x2, then x3, x5, then finally x10. The multipliers on each reel are multiplied together to create a global multiplier which is applied to all wins. So, let's say you've got an x2, x3, and x10 on reels 2, 3, and 4, then the actual win multiplier would be x60 (up to 10,000x). If you manage to collect a multiplier on all four reels of the Hot Zone, +4 additional free spins are awarded.

Hot Zone Wild: Slot Verdict

On the whole, Hot Zone Wild is a solid addition to both iSoftBet's Xtreme Pays Series and a well-made fruit-focused online slot with one or two relatively unique selling points. If Hot Zone Wild had been a brand-new release, it might have been more thrilling, but since it's an expanded copy, it was hard to get too enthused. Especially since the original was, in many ways, a better game. In terms of presentation, Euphoria's dreamy, drifting through the cosmos, catching the solar wind effect was more striking. Part of the reason might have been because Euphoria looked like it could have been a BTG release, yet it was striking all the same.

Hot Zone Wild, on the other hand, is more commonplace. It's got a slickness to it, de rigueur in these sorts of games, but squint and you could be playing a dozen other slots. Fortunately, Hot Zone Wild has a few tricks up its sleeve and shows once again the power multiplying multipliers can have. Euphoria itself could create some impressive modifiers, maxing out by getting an x3 on all five reels. Impressive, though compared to what's possible here, x243 is chump change as Hot Zone Wild can technically create an x10,000 win multiplier if you somehow someway get an x10 on all four eligible reels. Don't expect it to happen too frequently, though - to activate all four reels in Hot Zone Wild is no easy feat and rarely does the global multiplier reach over x100.

Interestingly, despite the win multiplier increase, both the original game and the follow up have the same max win figure of 20,000x the bet. A massive figure for sure, yet it's kinda weird that potential is the same when practically everything else has been blown out. Well, the bonus round is blown out, but Hot Zone Wild's base game is pretty no-frills. Overall, it's not as fancifully memorable as Euphoria was, but that doesn't detract from Hot Zone Wild's ability to build a seriously OP win multiplier in its bonus round, making it a worthy addition to iSoftBet's Extreme Pays range.