Castle of Fire from Pragmatic Play takes you to a fantasy realm where a beautiful damsel rules. Play occurs on a 6×3 reel set with 729 paylines.
In typical Pragmatic Play fashion, there are RTP ranges of 96.01% to as low as 93.99%.
The jackpot of the slot is 8,000x the stake which means it’s a high variance slot. So much so, that the Whizz team rates it a 10’er. Also, the hit frequency is 20%, offering a winner on every 5th spin.
Pragmatic Play uses a Cascading engine in most of its slots, but not here. What makes it interesting is that it uses a split symbol mechanic.
When the Mystery Symbols pitch, they remain on the reels creating more winning opportunities. There is a Free Spins feature but triggering it won’t come easy.
The stats Pragmatic Play put out says it triggers on average 1 in 193 spins. Luckily, there is a buy option if you want to take a chance by buying your free spins. You can start spinning the reels from 20 cents up to $240.
The Castle of Fire slot looks great visually but it’s the game’s engine that does all the hard yards. The audio track is not grinding on the ear either. At least we didn’t hit the mute button after 50 spins.
The low-value symbols are 10 to Ace which pays up to 3x the stake. The high-value symbols are the crown, tiger, wolf, bottle of potion, crown, and the fiery lady.
The top-paying symbol is the fiery lady, she pays up to $1,920 for 6 on the reels. The Wild symbol helps out with winning combinations when it replaces adjacent symbols except for the Castle scatter.
Castle of Fire Slot Bonus Rewards
Mystery Symbols
The trick with the Mystery Symbols is that they replicate themselves when they appear. Moreover, they increase the number of ways to win by transforming into 1, 2, or 3 symbols.
More importantly, every mystery symbol that lands in the free spins sticks to the reels.
Free Spins
Triggering the free spins feature is the bread-and-butter section of the game. This is where you’ll win the jackpot of 8,000x or $1.92 million if you play for the max stake.
Now, getting the free spins to trigger is not easy since the average trigger is 193 spins. If you play for the lowest stake of $0.20, you’ll need a budget of at least $38.
You’ll receive 12 free spins when 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters pitch. Depending on the number of scatters, they award scatter wins up to 500x. The Mystery Symbols give the free spins a lot of punch.
When they appear on the grid, they stick to it until the free spins feature ends. They also transform into instances of 1, 2, or 3 identical symbols. Regrettably, the bonus round doesn’t offer any free spin retriggers.
At least you can buy your free spins as much as you like.
Buy Option Free Spins
You can trigger the free spins feature at any time providing you fork out 100x the stake. The slot will toss up 3 to 6 scatters randomly onto the grid with an RTP of 96.06%.
Casual players that play for the lowest stakes will pay $20 for 12 free spins. If it’s any consolation, it’s slightly higher than the default RTP of 96.01%.
Paytable & Paylines
What We Like and Don’t Like About Castle of Fire
We’ve seen the theme a bunch of times before, so not exactly something novel from Pragmatic Play. The special features are “bare bones”, so to speak. The only notable feature is the jackpot of $1.92 million.
Tips & Strategy
Many players email us asking us how we keep on winning money when we play slots. To be honest, we’ve lost a lot over the years but we’ve learned from our mistakes.
Let’s just say we’ve got our own “slots radar”. We can pick up if a slot is all hot air and if it’s the real deal. Admittedly, we do get that wrong at times, but for the most part, we’re usually right.
Since the volatility is quite brutal our average stake was $10 per spin which yielded a negative result. With the $100,000 in free play credits, our balance was minus $400 after 50 spins.
We then tried our luck with the buy option at the maximum wager of $240. Buy 12 free spins cost $24,000 for a sublime win of $73,680. We were lucky since we ended up playing with 8 mystery symbols.
Don’t play the slot with a bonus because the volatility makes it difficult to clear the WR.
You can ask the casino to give you a no-deposit bonus to test it. Bear in mind, they usually come with strict bonus terms including a maximum cash out.
Verdict Castle of Fire Slot
Let’s conclude matters with the not-so-hot first. There are no free spin retriggers taking the shine off an otherwise great bonus. Though the Mystery Symbols have the propensity to greatly enhance wins, they seldom pop.
If you’re lucky to land at least 7 or 8 of them we guarantee you a hefty payout. The problem is on average 3 or 4 may appear and they usually replicate the low-value symbols.
The only way you’ll benefit from the low-pay symbols is if you play for the maximum stake. Castle of Fire is an average slot from Pragmatic Play since it blows more cold than hot.
When it fires in the free spins with those mystery symbols the wins can be phenomenal. Unfortunately, the free spins feature relies too heavily on them and there are no retriggers.
Microgaming along with its partnership studios dropped Mega Moolah Megaways recently. Apart from its $2 million jackpot, it offers free spins with progressive multipliers.
Mark Taylor, the chief author at Casino Whizz, is a dedicated gambling expert with over a decade within the casino world. His passion for poker, slots, and table games has fueled his career, where he shares invaluable insights, tips, and detailed game and casino reviews.
