Hot Roller Slot
Hot Roller is a Las Vegas-themed casino game from the NextGen software platform. Comprised of 5 reels and boasting 25 paylines, the game is evocative of those endless Vegas nights, when the neon lights from the towering casinos just won’t stop burning. The game contains symbols which generally spring to mind when you think of Sin City – namely, roulette wheels, poker chips, glamorous showgirls and waistcoat-wearing croupiers.
Hot Roller is a fine-looking game set against the vista of Las Vegas, every monolithic building glimmering as dusk falls. You can pick out some of the city’s most famous towers, but really, if you want to win big, your eye should be trained on the 5x3 grid rather than the backdrop. The reels are set on the green baize of a craps table.
Getting started
You’ll find all the controls for Hot Roller along the bottom of the screen. There are large buttons labelled Pay-table, AutoPlay, Total Bet, Win, Spin and Bet Max. All fairly self-explanatory. You can also configure the number of pay-lines.
A glittering set of playing card symbols, from 9 through to ace, make up the lower-value objects on the reels, but the better ones are related to the Vegas theme. They include a cocktail, a roulette wheel, a pile of poker chips, a green-jacketed croupier, a pair of dice and an alluring blonde showgirl.
Red Dice and Showgirls
The showgirl is wild, meaning you can use her to replace all others in the game to help you form winning combinations. However, she cannot stand in for the scattered dice. If you manage to use one or more showgirls in forming a winning combo, your prize will be doubled.
As well as having substitutional properties, the wild is related to some attractive pay-outs in its own right. For example, you can win 10 for matching two, 100 for matching three and 1,000 for matching four. The biggest pay-out is 10,000 for matching five on an active pay-line.
The symbol which shows a pair of flaming red dice is the game’s scatter. A free game feature is awarded when you land two or three scattered dice. At this point, you’ll roll three dice: one white and two red. The number contained on the rolled white dice is your free games multiplier, while the values on the two red dice are multiplied together to determine the number of free games. At best, then, you could be looking at 36 free spins with a x6 multiplier attached! The inclusion of a roll-the-dice game is pretty nifty, particularly given this title’s old school nature. It’s all about the luck of the dice, just like in Vegas.
The free games feature can be re-triggered from within a round of free spins, with the same number of free games, and the same multiplier as the original trigger, attached.
The regular symbols pay pretty well in their own right. The smiling croupier is the most lucrative, paying 1,000 for five, 250 for four, 25 for three and three for two. Next it’s the roulette wheel, which pays 250 for five, 100 for four, 20 for three and two for two. The poker chip and cocktail icons are interchangeable, meaning you can win a pay-out for two of one and one of another. For any combination of these, the pay-outs are 200 for five, 50 for four and 15 for three.
Five aces or kings nets 150, while five queens or jacks pays 100. It’s also 100 for five 10s or 9s.
Got the heart to gamble?
Hot Roller includes a ubiquitous gamble feature, whereby players get the opportunity to double their cash after hitting a regular win. However, the Gamble feature is not available in Autoplay. Providing you’re playing manually, you just need to click Gamble under the reels and predict whether the next card to be drawn from the deck is red or black. Win and you’ll double your money; lose and you squander your bankroll. You can also take a 1/4 gamble by guessing the colour of the suit to quadruple your stack.
Vegas verdict
Hot Roller is a good slot to play if you’re dazzled by the bright lights and insistent glamour of Las Vegas. It’s also got some nice features and a strong potential for handsome wins. The luck of the dice element adds to an extra bit of spice to a game that is, on the whole, thoroughly enjoyable.
