Mirage City

Mirage City: Slot Overview

Hacksaw Gaming is a highly ambitious outfit with metaphorical fingers in all sorts of gambling-related pies, including working alongside an ever-growing list of partners. One of the latest (at the time of review) is Ace Roll, which debuted with an unusual Itero remake, before following up by making something more original. The game is Mirage City, a slot that gets the party jumpin' with features such as expanding wild symbols linked to individual reel multiplier values. There is also a fireworks display, so if that sounds like your kind of shindig, it's time to bop.

Mirage City has a rave in the middle of nowhere, Burning Man thing going on, where the sun is setting over a desert populated by tents, tasselled bicycles, and various festival accoutrements. It doesn't exactly match Burning Man's spectacle of large-scale art, community, and radical self-expression, but Mirage City does produce a measure of festival vibe. Rhythmical EDM helps, as do the lightshow and fireworks display, though while the visuals make an effort, they're also slightly dated-looking as well. Not necessarily in a bad way, maybe retro, let's say, but Mirage City has the feel of a game that was released a few years ago.

Mirage City's partying takes place on a 5x5 matrix with 15 paylines, landing winning combinations of 3 to 5 OAK. Gig tickets range from $/€0.10 to $/€75 per spin, and when playing this way, the highest of the two RTPs is 96.31%. Whilst the vibe might be pretty chill at times, Mirage City's volatility is high, the game docs going so far as to call it 'Extreme'.

The table of pay symbols has neon purple 10 through Ace card ranks, and four characters as its premium symbols. Winning combinations of 5 in length pay 1x to 2.5x for the royals, or 5x to 10x the stake for the high pays. Wilds are worth 20x when a line of 5 of them hits, and they can also substitute for all regular paying symbols. If a wild participates in a win, it grows into a full reel Expanded Wild.

Mirage City: Slot Features

Firework symbols trigger respins and build reel multipliers, while wilds can expand to make use of those multi values. The bonus round is where reel multipliers persist, while the features are rounded off by a couple of buy options.

Fireworks and Expanded Wilds

Landing a Firework symbol in the base or bonus game triggers Fireworks Respins, which end when no Firework symbols land. Single Fireworks can be additive +2 to +5 or multiplicative x2 to x5, and their values raise their reel multiplier by the corresponding value. Multireel Fireworks increase all reel multipliers by the same amount (additive +2 to +5 or multiplicative x2 to x5). Reel multipliers are applied to Expanded Wild symbols. In the base game, the wild symbol resets the reel multiplier to x1 after being used in a win. The Expanded Wild symbol cannot appear on the same reel as a scatter symbol.

Burning Sky

Landing 3 scatters in the base game triggers the Burning Sky bonus round with 3 lives. The bonus round mechanics are the same as the base game, except the Expanded Wild symbol does not reset the reel multiplier when active. Each Firework symbol boosts persistent reel multipliers up to x999 and resets the life count back to 3. Wild symbols appear more often, but scatters do not land.

Feature Buys

Mirage City has two feature buys. One is BonusHunt FeatureSpins, where scatters appear 5 times more often for 3x the stake, or a Burning Sky trigger for 100x the stake.

Mirage City: Slot Verdict

Well, if nothing else, Mirage City is more inventive than the last slot Ace Roll released. The Burning Man-type atmosphere is a bit of a mixed bag; while the EDM soundtrack and neon visuals establish a festival mood, the graphics look slightly older compared to current top-tier releases, lacking the modern polish typically associated with its partner, Hacksaw Gaming. But, a studio has got to start somewhere, and after throwing off its debut slot's remake strategy, players get to see more of what Ace Roll has to offer and what directions it may possibly be heading in.

As for Mirage City, the gameplay is built around the synergy between Fireworks, Reel multipliers, and Expanded Wilds. The base game's built-in limitation is the way multipliers reset from spin to spin, though this is shrugged off to an extent should respins stack up. The volatility becomes apparent when free spins trigger, since it grants just 3 lives, which can refill and build multipliers when Firework symbols land. You can see how this symbiosis could be volatile, a sort of shorter, sharper version of something like Multifly. Winning potential is higher than Yggdrasil's version, at 12,500x the stake, achievable in all game modes.

And so, if players can see past visuals that may feel a few years behind the curve, there is a level of entertainment here to sample. Mirage City might not be the desert festival to end all other desert festivals, but it's more of a positive step than the developer's first release, showing Ace Roll is ready to experiment with its own ideas to help find its place in the Hacksaw Gaming ecosystem.