Money, money, money, it's surely one of the key reasons players try their luck with online slots, and if you like visual reminders of wealth in your games, here's an option from developer Pragmatic Play. It's been dubbed Towering Fortunes and sits comfortably in the genre of slots that likes to flaunt the so-called finer things in life. Or, if not finer, more expensive, at least. If that sounds pretty neat, feel free to join us as we well and truly get our 'bling' on. Sorry, we'll try to tone down the gauche setting a notch or two from now on.
In Towering Fortunes, players find themselves in a built-up part of town, with skyscrapers blazing across the horizon. The setting could be made up, but there's a ring of Hong Kong to the view, with what could be the Observation Wheel on the right and the International Commerce Centre to the left. While musing on this part of the world, we found out that the name Hong Kong means 'fragrant harbour', and apparently around 40% of the territory consists of nature reserves and country parks, despite being drenched in high-rise buildings. Anyway, this might be Hong Kong, it might not, yet it's somewhere dynamically urban where it feels like fortunes can potentially be made.
Towering Fortunes is played on a 5-reel, 3-row grid, which has 20 fixed paylines for landing winning combinations across. Players should be prepared for a highly volatile math model, which the studio has rated 4.5 lightning bolts out of 5. As is typically the case, RTP is variable, with the highest value coming in at 96.5% before dipping to 95.5% or 94.5% at the lower two settings. Playable on any device, users have bet levels of 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin to choose from.
A rather singular Hold & Spin feature is Towering Fortunes' main event, but until it activates, regular payouts occur when matching symbols land across a payline in adjacent reels starting from the left. The first four are J-A card royals with diamond decorations, paying 2.5 to 5 times the stake for a five-of-a-kind hit. Next are glasses of liquor and cigars, sports cars, yachts, jets, and a lady as the premium tiles, awarding 7.5 to 50x the bet for five of a kind. Assisting with creating winning lines are the wild symbols, which land on all reels to substitute any pay symbol. When the dashing wild tile makes wins of itself, it pays up to 250x the bet for five-of-a-kind.
The two extra bits lighting up Towering Fortunes' reels are Mystery Symbols and the Hold & Spin feature. Mystery Symbols are straightforward. When they land, they all transform to reveal the same matching random pay symbol.
Landing 3 or more Money symbols anywhere on the grid in the base game triggers the Hold & Spin feature. The normal grid is removed and replaced with one consisting of 5 reels, with each reel having 11 positions. Triggering Money symbols fall to the bottom of their respective reels where they sit for the feature. When the reels spin, only blanks or new Money symbols hit - when Money symbols land, they stack at the bottom of the reels or on top of any symbols already there. Now, each reel has 3 lives. When three spins occur where a reel has not landed a new Money symbol, it is blocked, and no more spins take place on it. When a Money symbol lands on an active reel, it resets the reel's lives back to three.
At the top of each reel, a multiplier is displayed starting at x1 and which applies to Money symbols sitting beneath it. When Money symbols stack to certain heights, the multiplier increases. If the stack reaches 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11 symbols high, the multiplier becomes x2, x5, x10, x20, x30 or x100, respectively. When all 5 reels are blocked, and no more spins remain, the round ends. Then, the Money symbols in view are awarded.
How you feel about money slots, in general, is probably how you'd feel about putting Towering Fortunes through its paces. It has a bold, almost retro look in parts, as if the game came out a few years ago with a sort of The Finer Reels of Life look and feel about it. Instead of detracting from the experience, the design, in some ways, just adds to the 'Check me out, I swim in a pool Benjamins' attitude. In other words, the dated-looking symbols amplify the charm, if that's the right word, like a billionaire CEO wearing pyjamas to a meeting where everyone else is in business suits because, well, they're rich, and they can.
If the livin' large thing invokes feelings of ambivalence, but you're the sort of player who favours a bit of hold 'n win action, Towering Fortunes actually has a pretty nifty bonus round to try out. Simply designed, though quite clever at the same time, it's unique enough to warrant a look, even if the rest of the game might come across as a bit garish. The Hold & Spin feature offers action that can get quite interesting when enough Money symbols start stacking to awaken reel multipliers. Multipliers can grow quite nicely when the going's good, too, from single digits to double, and with a bit (or a lot) of luck, bag the x100. At full blast, Towering Fortunes is kept under wraps with the specific figure of 6,422x the bet as its win cap.
A respectable amount, yet if that isn't enough to get you out of bed in the morning, but you like Towering Fortunes' look, something like Dream Drop Diamonds might be a better option. Both games use a similar stacking symbols concept in their main bonus rounds, with the difference being Relax Gaming's slot is wired into a progressive jackpot network. Towering Fortunes dangles less potential lucre, but it ticks the right boxes for one of these expensive consumer item-themed games while tossing a fairly unique bonus round into the mix.
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