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If you play enough high-volatility slots, you learn pretty quickly that massive multipliers always come with a problem. In Backseat Gaming’s Firelord, that problem is a paytable that looks downright microscopic at first glance.
Running on a 5×5 grid with 3,125 ways to win and a tumbling reels mechanic, Firelord is entirely built around a global multiplier that doubles with every consecutive tumble. It climbs from 1x all the way to a staggering 2,048x. The RTP is 96.01%, though operators can also run it at 94.01%, 92.01% or 90.01%, so it’s worth checking which version your casino has. But does the math actually translate into an entertaining session?
The Base Game: Prepare for a Grind
The base game here is a slow burn, and you need to bring some patience. Because the game’s engine is so heavily reliant on that doubling multiplier, the base symbol values have been nerfed to compensate.
To put it in perspective: the top premium symbol (the Phoenix) pays a measly 2.5x your bet for a five-of-a-kind hit. The royal symbols won’t even get you half your stake back for a full line. If you’re looking for a game that throws out generous single-line hits, you are in the wrong place.
During my session, the base game was pretty quiet. I hit a brutal stretch of about a dozen dead (or near-dead) spins where the multiplier barely twitched. Even when the board did connect, a doubled multiplier on a 0.1x royal symbol is still tiny. The most exciting thing the base game did was tease the bonus, landing two scatters early and giving me that dramatic fifth-reel slowdown, though it never delivered the third.
The Bonus Rounds: Raising the Floor
If the base game is the chore, the Free Spins feature is the reward. Landing three, four, or five Bonus symbols triggers the Normal, Super, or Legendary bonus, giving you 10 free spins.
The tier you trigger is crucial because it dictates your starting multiplier (8x, 16x, or 32x, respectively). More importantly, the multiplier doesn’t reset to 1x between spins; it resets to your starting tier.
But the real make-or-break mechanic here is the Key symbol, which only appears in the bonus. If a Key lands, whatever multiplier you reached on that specific spin becomes your new permanent floor for the rest of the feature. If you manage to drop a Key early in the round, the entire complexion of the bonus changes. Suddenly, every single tumble sequence is starting from a massive baseline, turning those cheap base symbols into serious payouts.
Wild Reels & The 10,000x Chase
Backseat Gaming uses expanding wilds in other games too (like Totem Tower Bonanza), but they’ve tweaked the formula here. The Firelord symbol acts as a full-reel expanding wild. Unlike other games where wilds only expand if they guarantee a win, the Firelord expands every time it lands, leaving the grid to figure out the connections.
It doesn’t carry a multiplier, but it doesn’t need to. A Wild Reel right down the middle of the grid spikes your connecting ways.
Because the base symbols are so cheap, you aren’t really hunting for a screen full of Phoenixes to hit that 10,000x max win cap. The top of the paytable becomes irrelevant once the multiplier hits the thousands. The “perfect storm” in Firelord is simple: Get into the bonus, land a Key to lock in a high multiplier floor, and hit a long tumble sequence with an expanding wild in the middle to multiply your ways.
However, from a mechanical standpoint, the bonus round is incredibly well-designed. The tension of hoping for a Key symbol to lock in a massive multiplier floor gives the free spins a great sense of progression. It’s fair to say this game won’t hand out wins easily, but when the doubling engine catches fire, it’s easy to see how it can smash that 10,000x cap.
