Hot Shots Review

Theme and Story Line

One of the best made slots in 2018 is Hot Shots slot game. A delightful riff on the Football (or soccer for any Americans out there) World Cup.

Instead of overpaid hooligans taking to the field though, the players are cartoon animals, none of which look completely sports ready. A Russian balalaika bearing bear, a Brazilian cheetah, a Spanish bull, and English bulldog and, lowest value of all, an onion bedecked cockerel.

The set up is fun and the football theme topical, but is it worth putting your coins in and kicking off?

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

Well at the design level, the answer is definitely yes. The symbols are cute and funny. They’re also well animated, on a nice background of a jungle clearing football pitch.

The scene is augmented by the background noise of a football crowd and the sound effects for the spins are top notch recording work.

All in all the presentation is hi-resolution and highly professional.

Gameplay

The gameplay lets the side down a little though. Although there are no real problems with the way the game functions, there isn’t very much going on beyond the typical spin reels, win money style of play.

The 5 reels are three rows deep and payouts work on a 243-way system rather than by winlines. As a result you need only hit matching symbols in adjacent reels starting from the reel 1.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The mundane gameplay has only two special symbols to spice things up. Wilds and the Hot Shot scatter symbol.

You can win free spins by matching Hot Shots symbols up. Hit a minimum of 3 and you’ll get 10 free spins as well as a payout of 4x your total bet. The payout and number of spins increase the more symbols you hit. Hit five and you get a 10x payout and 20 free spins.

It would have been nice to have a small mini-game rather than just more spins, especially such a well programed slot as this, but it is hard to be too disappointed with the spins as these are where you can rack up a nice profit.

The other special symbol are Wild symbols. Hot Shots has a nice twist on the standard Wild in that when you do hit a wild (they are much harder to hit in this game than in most) they expand, replacing symbol one above, one below and to the left and right.

As a result, the wins when you do hit a Wild (or two as in the image below) you can win massive amounts by racking up a large number of win-ways (thirty ways in the image below).

The slightly strange result is that Wilds are more of a bonus than the free spins.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

Variance in the game is categorised as med-high by most analyses. This is a definite plus in our book as we tend to favour higher variance (see our strategy page to understand why).

Given that the game has an excellent RTP of 97.15% we would probably recommend this game on its statistics alone.

The bet sizing is quite broad with the bet per spin being 25 x coin value x "bet per way" (this last is slightly oddly named as it is simply a bet multiplier and does not relate to the 243 ways you can win). With the coin value ranges on the site we tested that made for a range of bet sizes per spin of £/$/€0.25 to £/$/€125.

So most bankroll sizes are accounted for.

Conclusion

Hot Shots is a beautifully designed, football themed game with cute cartoon animals for symbols and a great vibe.

Coupled with its high-variance (in large part due to its 243-ways plus the expanding Wild symbols) and low vig this is a strongly recommended game.

Its only downside is a lack of variety in play-style. But that is easily forgiven in a slot so strong in all other aspects.