Firelord Slot Review

I recently spent some time playing Firelord, a fire-and-fantasy themed slot from Backseat Gaming. If you've been watching for ELK Studios' Propaganda 2, due in October, you'll notice the likeness: Firelord is all about a tumbling global multiplier that can snowball into massive numbers. It has some really thrilling moments, but also a few frustrating quirks you should know about before spinning.

The game plays on a 5x5 grid with 3,125 ways to win. The base game loop is pretty straightforward: winning symbols pop, new ones drop in, and every consecutive tumble doubles your global multiplier. It starts at 1x and can climb all the way to a 2048x cap.

It's fun to watch, but in the base game, that multiplier resets to 1x the second a spin ends. To get any real traction, you need to get into the free spins, where the multiplier floor can be raised.

Landing 3, 4, or 5 Bonus symbols triggers the Normal, Super, or Legendary Bonus, giving you 10 free spins. If you're into bonus buys, the Normal, Super and Legendary Bonus cost 100x, 300x, and a very steep 1000x your bet. (There's also a 250x Mystery Bonus and a Bonus Boost that doubles your stake to triple your trigger chances). Depending on the tier, your multiplier starts at 8x, 16x, or 32x, and resets to that number between spins instead of 1x.

Two special symbols matter most here: a Wild Reel that fills a whole column, and a Key symbol that only lands in the bonus. The Key is the best symbol in the game, as it locks your current multiplier as the new minimum for the rest of the spins.

I bought the 1000x Legendary Bonus. I got incredibly lucky: the Key landed on the very first spin, raising my multiplier floor from 32x to 128x. A few spins later, a good run of tumbles pushed the multiplier all the way to the 2048x cap, paying out 1,741x just from cheap royal symbols. Later on, an expanded Wild combined with that 128x floor for a single 4,147x payout.

The round ended up paying out roughly 8,000x my bet.

Looking at Backseat Gaming's overall catalog, Firelord is a bit of an odd duck. It's their only 5x5 "ways" board (they usually stick to lines, clusters, or scatter pays).

The expanding wild is also a bit different for them. In their other games like Moon Dynasty or Toad Town, expanded wilds usually carry their own multipliers (up to 100x or 200x). In Firelord, the Wild Reel is completely bare. It relies entirely on the board's global multiplier to generate a big win.

The game runs on a standard 96.01% RTP across all modes and buys, which is perfectly fine. But the math model has one glaring issue: the max win is hard-capped at 10,000x your bet.

Because that cap applies across the board, it makes buying the 1000x Legendary Bonus a really tough sell. If you pay 1000x just to get in, the absolute best you can do is 10 times your money before the game cuts you off. Contrast this with Hades Domain (another Backseat game), which prices its top bonus at a much more reasonable 500x, or ELK's Propaganda 2, due in October, which builds a similar multiplier and lists a 25,000x max win.

Firelord has a genuinely exciting multiplier mechanic, and when the tumbles line up in the bonus, it's a thrill to watch the numbers double. However, the steep price of the top bonus and the restrictive 10,000x max win cap make it hard to fully recommend.