Hammerblaze Free Play in Demo Mode

Hammerblaze review

Theme and Storyline

Hammerblaze invokes Hephaestus, the blacksmith to the gods in the Greek Pantheon. He appears on the reels, along with the helmets and shields he has made in his smithy and the hammer and anvil he uses as tools.

Everything is suffused with the glow of lava and is overseen by a ring of Greek columns behind the reels.

The theme of this Thunderkick slot will appeal to fans of Greek mythology and ancient history.

Graphics, Sounds, and Animations

The graphics are a key selling point of this slot. The game has a very strong sense of atmosphere and a clear artistic style that is supported by detailed, fast-paced animations.

It has a strong, heroic soundtrack that echoes the score of fantasy movies like Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts.

Overall, the visuals are as finely wrought as you would hope for a slot about the god of manual crafts.

Gameplay

Hammerblaze is played on a grid that is seven symbols wide and seven symbols high. Wins are generated by landing groups of five or more matching symbols that are connected horizontally or vertically.

When a win forms, one of the symbols is replaced by a Wild before a cascade is triggered, removing the winning symbols and having new symbols drop down from above.

The maximum win for this slot is capped at a total of 10,000x the player's total bet. That is a pretty massive maximum win… if you can hit it.

Wilds, Bonuses, and Free Spins

The Wild symbol substitutes for all other symbols (though not for the Scatter), and it comes with an Exploding Wild feature.

When a Wild forms as part of a win, it explodes, destroying a 3x3 block of symbols around it. These gaps are also filled by the cascade feature. The squares in the 3x3 block are also marked with a multiplier. The multiplier starts at x2. But if the square is part of another Wild explosion, the multiplier doubles up to a maximum of x128.

Any winning combination that includes a symbol on a multiplier square has the highest multiplier square applied to the winning combination.

Three or more Scatters anywhere on the reels triggers the Bonus Game. The player receives ten Free Spins. During these Free Spins, any multiplier squares created by a Wild explosion are sticky and remain on the reels until the end of the Bonus Game.

This gives the player an opportunity to build huge multipliers for potentially massive wins toward the end of the free spins.

Bet Sizes, RTP, and Variance

The Return to Player of Hammerblaze is just 94.13%. This is far below our yardstick for an average of roughly 96%. If you pay for the highest level of bet plus, this increases to 94.40%, but this is still not very high.

Combining the low RTP with Hammerblaze's high volatility does go a small way to making the game more suitable for our preferred slot strategies. But it's too little to fix such a big issue.

The range of bets on the site we tested ran from a minimum bet per spin of $/£/€0.10 up to a maximum of $/£/€100.00 per spin.

Conclusion

The low RTP is a dealbreaker for us. Which is a shame given how much we like the visuals, animations, and theme.

Even the gameplay gets a thumbs up from us. So, if RTP doesn't matter to you, this could be the right slot for you.

But we would not recommend it to any player who pays attention to the mathematical side of slot games.