Red Hot Riches

Red Hot Riches: Slot Overview

If you're going to be chasing 'riches', it might as well be of the red-hot kind, right? At least, this appears to be the thinking at Alchemy Gaming, which has come up with the online slot Red Hot Riches. The team hasn't come up with a lot that's overly new when making the game, however, since much of what you will find here is recycled from an earlier slot called Anvil & Ore. This means a return of things like Rolling Reels, Echo Rolls, Upsizer, Upsizer Buy, free spins, and the Upsizer Wheel, but in a totally different setting.

Where the previous game was all about breaking rocks below ground in the hope of finding precious metals, Red Hot Riches is an above-ground event held in a funky club-type environment. The animation behind the gaming grid, a sort of drifting through the galaxy effect, is pretty neat, and the roaming spotlights help emphasise the club effect. Players with strong powers of mental visualisation might be able to pretend they're famous patrons of some upmarket hip spot where celebs go to see or be seen. Dunno, just letting the mind drift here, inspired by the rhythmical tunes and all those lights.

Red Hot Riches is played on a 5x5 aligned gaming board providing 3,125 ways to win. While close, very close to Anvil & Ore, its default RTP is ever so slightly lower at 96.25%, which might suggest a new math model. Very highly volatile, players can expect a theoretical hit rate of 21.82% on this RTP version and are able to pick bets of 30 p/c to $/€42.

Red Hot Riches pays for landing winning combinations of 3 to 5 of a kind, and there are 10 regular paying symbols in the game. The lower paying ones are 10 to A card ranks worth 2 to 2.8 times the bet for a 5-matching symbol hit, or 3.5 to 7.5x the bet for hitting a line of 5 bells, coins, gold bars, gold bars and coins, or dollar sign symbols. Wilds land on all reels as well. They can be used to substitute any of the regular pay symbols or pay wins of their own worth up to 15 times the stake for a 5 wild win.

Red Hot Riches: Slot Features

Red Hot Riches reels off features such as Rolling Reels, Echo Rolls, Upsizer, Free Upsizer Max, Upsizer Buy, and Free Spins + Free Upsizer Tokens.

Rolling Reels

The Rolling Reels feature removes winning symbols from the grid when they create a winning way. The gaps are filled by dropping symbols down from above. A sequence of Rolling Reels wins continues until no new win hits.

Echo Roll

After any win, there is a chance the Echo Roll may trigger to award another guaranteed win. Empty positions are filled with high, low, or wild symbols.

Upsizer

Upsizer Coins land randomly in the base game and are collected when they hit. Collected Upsizer Coins unlock higher free spins modifiers on the Upsizer Trail located next to the reels. The trail has free spins levels of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12 free spins, and max Rolling Wins multipliers of x10, x20, and x50, plus 1 or 2 guaranteed Echo Rolls in free spins.

Free Upsizer Max

Landing 3 or more scatters in the base game awards 1 Upsizer Max Coin. Collecting 5 Upsizer Max Coins triggers free spins at the maximum Upsizer level.

Upsizer Buy

Before free spins begin, players are able to purchase higher Upsizer modifiers. The cost of doing so is displayed on the screen.

Free Spins + Free Upsizer Tokens

Landing 3 scatters in the base game triggers free spins at the current Upsizer Trail level. In free spins, each Roll increases the win multiplier by +1, and the multiplier does not reset until the round ends. The maximum multiplier is x10, x20, or x50, depending on the Upsizer level. Each scatter in free spins awards +1 free spin, and when landing more than 3 scatters, each additional scatter awards an x10 win. When the free spins round ends, the Free Upsizer Wheel spins to award up to 150 Upsizer coins.

Red Hot Riches: Slot Verdict

The Games Global unit of studios is really, really keen on reusing ideas and features in its games, of which Red Hot Riches is a prime example. It's not an exact pixel-for-pixel, digit-for-digit copy of Anvil & Ore, but it is very, very close regardless. For instance, the RTP is slightly different, that's something, and after inspecting the game rules, Red Hot Riches awards bet multipliers rather than Upsizer Coins when additional triggering scatters hit, and it doesn't have a bonus buy either. Aside from that, Red Hot Riches is basically the same thing, just in a funkier, dance-along format.

And so the same kinds of positives and negatives apply to the two games. Players get a tried and true combo of Rolling Reels, Echo Spins, and a free spins round that can be customised or maximised, shall we say, for a price, of course. Or you may get lucky over the course of the base game session and collect enough Upsizer Coins to end up with a tempting free spins set up without the need for shelling out more. There's also the chance of getting 5 Upsizer Max Coins, too. As before, winning potential tops out at 5,000x the bet, a far cry from the massive (advertised) max win figure attached to Aquanauts, an earlier release from Alchemy Gaming which shares some of the features and gaming concepts - although, there's a chance we'll still be waiting for the big one to be hit when this review goes to print.

Perhaps a point of interest is whether Red Hot Riches, with its funky vibes or Anvil & Ore, with its use of mining, will strike the biggest chord with online gamblers. Much of a muchness, really, with little setting the two games apart, which is good news for those who appreciate Alchemy Gaming's past releases, a tad meh for anyone looking for more original thought.