Ever been shopping, and there are four or five items you want, but you couldn't whittle it down to one, so you ended up buying the lot? That seems to be the thinking at Pragmatic Play with the release of not just one Shining Hot slot, but deep breath, Shining Hot 5, Shining Hot 20, Shining Hot 40, and Shining Hot 100. The number in each title relates to the number of paylines in each game. While there are other numerical differences between the various slots as well, the core experience is essentially the same, so we've bundled them all up like a basket of groceries.
Loading Shining Hot is like stepping back to an earlier era when graphics were, let's say, not as evolved as they are now. A shimmering flame effect flickers next to a 5-reel, 3-row panel in the 5 and 20 payline versions or a 5-reel, 4-row set-up in the 40 and 100 payline versions. The rest of the visuals are the same – loads of fruit, retro-looking reels etc. etc. According to science, the shortest unit of time measured is a zeptosecond, which is one trillionth of a billionth of a second. Just 247 zeptoseconds are needed for a photon to cross a molecule of hydrogen. However, it'll take about half that time to clock whether Shining Hot is the right game for you or not.
>Joking aside, there are a few statistical differences between the four games. All are classed as highly volatile, though the 40 payline version appears to be slightly less volatile than the other three after peering at Pragmatic Play's lightning bolt meter. RTP ranges from 96.32% to 96.36%, while minimum bets are anything from 5 p/c to $/€1 per spin while the max bet in all four Shining Hot versions is $/€100.
Symbol value is another area where the four games deviate, though the same symbols are used – bananas, lemons, cherries, plums, oranges, and apples. Landing a five of a kind winning line is worth 1.1x-12x on Shining Hot 100, 2.75x-30x the bet on Shining Hot 40, 5.5x-60x on Shining Hot 20, and 22x-240x the bet on Shining Hot 5. In all of them, at least three matching symbols are needed to create a winning line, starting from reel 1. Wild symbols appear in all games on all reels to substitute for any symbol except the scatter. A five-symbol wild win pays 25x, 62.5x, 125x, or 500x the bet in the 100, 40, 20, or 5 payline versions, respectively.
>Blink, and you'll miss this part because if there's one thing Shining Hot is lite on, its features. There's only one extra bit, scatter symbol winning possibilities. The bell is the scatter symbol which can appear on any reel. In all four Shining Hots, landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters anywhere in view triggers a payout worth 5, 15, or 500 times the stake, respectively.
Clearly, players who like some innovation, a bit of something new, or just a bit of anything really, would do well to pass on the Shining Hot range. While humanity teeters on the cusp of migrating to the metaverse, Shining Hot feels like a real anachronism. Maybe that's the point. A rejection of modernity because the old ways were seen as better? Nostalgia is popular in slots, after all, but Shining Hot doesn't offer the uber-cool form of it you can find in games like Hellcatraz or Banana Town. This is more of an option for those who may be into retro-style, land-based gaming.
As a middle ground, players who like the old ways with a modern streak might do well to check out a game like Pragmatic Play's own Fire Strike 2. A fruity slot with a stack of features and massive potential. Shining Hot, by comparison, musters up wins as high as 2,500x the bet. Not a massive total, yet an amount that fits quite well with everything else the range has to offer, which isn't a whole lot. Ah well, let's not knock it down too much; there must be gamblers out there who go for this simple style and more power to them.
So which Shining Hot slot to choose? Well, players get the chance to weigh up the number of paylines, the symbol values, or stake levels, and ponder what sort of experience they would like to have. But really, does it matter? Each Shining Hot option is a basic game with no bonus round destination and very little to see along the way. Either you love the no-frills approach or its lack of anything special may very well, in the words of German artist George Grosz, come across as 'threadbare, ugly, and often pointlessly ambiguous.'
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