Balloon Race Live Game Review
For years, industry insiders said that live slot games wouldn’t be possible. After all, how would that work? It was a fair assumption, but somebody thought differently. Evolution didn’t agree, and the launch of Balloon Race proved everyone wrong. Well, in a manner of speaking.
Balloon Race advertises itself as a live slot machine, but in reality, it is more of a game show and features the same mechanics as Crazy Coin Flip and other simpler releases. In short, you’ve got a three-pronged game loosely based on qualification, top-up, and bonus round phases. Don’t worry if that sounds complicated; we’ll straighten everything out in our Balloon Race live game show review.
Theme and Design
On the face of it, Balloon Race certainly looks like a slot – apart from the live host. The qualification phase features a set of 5×3 slot reels alongside the titular balloon airship. You’ll play the slot as you’d normally expect. However, if you make it to the top-up phase, you’ll head over to an instant win-style feature, not too dissimilar from what you’d expect to see in a slot bonus feature.
The final aspect of the game, the bonus round, offers more of the same. Oddly enough, the entire game is an RNG experience, save for the final phase of Balloon Race. This is where the live host comes into the game. Again, while this theme and design are radically different from conventional Evolution games, such as Lightning Roulette or Dream Catcher, it has plenty in common with Crazy Pachinko and other game show titles featuring bonus and top-up mechanics.
Specs and Gameplay
As with the games already mentioned, your task here is to qualify via the slot phase and make it to the bonus round, where you can benefit from multipliers attached to balloons. Confused? Allow us to explain.
The game begins with the qualification phase. At this stage of the game, you’re basically playing a five-reel, ten-line slot. The objective is to land three scatters or wild symbols to progress. In a normal slot, three wilds would lead to a big win, and three scatters would trigger a bonus. Three scatters will also trigger a bonus here, and it is arguably more profitable than the customary slot bonus round. There are XXXtreme and Super XXXtreme options that can aid progression, but they cost. More on those in a moment.
While you can land wins using any of the conventional symbols on the reels and expanding wilds will help with that, you’re looking for three wilds (or scatters) to make it to the Balloon Race bonus. Once you qualify, you can choose to participate in the top-up game or not. If you do, between three and six balloons will become available in different colors. Some may burst (and are useless), while others will reach the top and be added to your multipliers. However, increasing your multipliers via the top-up round costs.
Following the top-up round (even if you didn’t join it), the actual Balloon Race will begin. Four colored balloons will race up toward the top of the screen, each one a different color. Whichever one hits the top first will reward its multiplier to players. This isn’t randomised. A ball machine features eighty colors (twenty balls for every color). They will be drawn by the host one by one. Once one colored ball has risen five spaces (been drawn five times), that balloon will be declared the winner, and its multiplier is paid out.
How to Bet and Win
The first time you’ll get to wager on Balloon Race is during the qualification phase. Assuming you play the game normally, you’re looking at starting stakes of 0.10. Maximum bets seldom exceed 2,500.00, although this may vary depending on where you reside. Should you choose to utilize the XXXtreme or Super XXXtreme options, then expect to shell out 5x and 50x your bet, respectively. The XXXtreme option gives you one wild or scatter per spin, making things easier. The Super XXXtreme option guarantees two wilds or scatter per spin. There is no way to purchase your way directly into the final stages of the game.
Prizes won during the qualification of the game vary from 0.1x your bet for three 10s, rising to 15x your bet for five silver ribbon symbols. In the top-up round, you can raise the value of the multipliers in the balloons by increasing your bet, but you won’t land any of those prizes until the final stage. This isn’t always worth the trouble since you’re not guaranteed to improve your multipliers by doing so.
The final prize you’ll receive in this game is made up of a combination of the scatter multipliers from the base game multiplied by the bonus round multipliers and any top-up multipliers you managed to acquire (if any). Prizes can, theoretically, end up being worth as much as 30,000x your bet, but we’ve only seen videos of this. We certainly didn’t hit those heights when playing this game. Balloon Race has an RTP rate of 96.09%, which is on par with most top slots you’ll find online, while the RTP dips every so marginally for the XXXtreme and Super XXXtreme spins.
Bonus Features
Balloon Race doesn’t really have any bonus features. There’s a good reason for this – the entire game is effectively a bonus feature. It seems a bit harsh to call the final phase of the live casino game a bonus round, considering the objective (and the entire basis of the game) is to get there. However, as there are no guarantees you’ll ever make it past the qualification phase, it isn’t unrealistic to call it that.
GOSU Verdict
We’re sort of torn when it comes to the Balloon Race live game show. On the one hand, Evolution has managed to create a live slot. On the other hand, have they really? What we actually have here is an RNG slot game, followed by a gamble mode, and tied up with a game of bingo. The difficulty of progressing beyond the qualification phase (without forking out up to fifty times your bet) makes it a big ask to like Balloon Race. However, there are bright sides, too. For starters, the wins you could potentially have if you make it all the way to the end are nothing short of astronomical.
It’s worth having a crack at Balloon Race at least once, especially if you’re used to playing slots. Balloon Race may not be one of the most popular Evolution-developed live casino games, but it is widely available. Any of the Evolution-powered crypto casinos represented right here on our site should fit the bill nicely.
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