Mining themed games are usually less cute than Hot Gems manages to be. It’s the design style that helps it the most and makes it quite different from other games with the same theme. It’s still a slot with gemstones for its main symbols, with mining carts, a pickaxe and all the usual parts which these games tend to have in them. It’s a lot more cartoonish though, and the result is a very pretty game. Hot Gems is a slot machine which comes from Playtech.
This cute mining slot has collapsing reels, scatter symbols, free spins, multipliers and wilds, all good features to take advantage of. A top payout of $250,000 is possible, the combinations forming on one of the 25 available lines.
Features of Hot Gems
Some of the features in Hot Gems are normal ones, like the wild, the scatter or the free spins, while another one is rarer, and I’m talking here about the collapsing reels and their multiplier.
The Collapsing Reels are used both during the base game and the free spins. It’s a lot more fun when the free spins are in use, but at its basis it works the same way. Symbols which form combinations explode, and thanks to the newly empty spots the reels collapse and new symbols complete the line-up. They can then form additional combinations. The reels continue to collapse with each new wave of wins that forms, until there is a round without wins in it.
A square shaped stone with the word WILD on it is, as you’d expect, the wild feature. It is a symbol that only the middle three reels get. If it appears in the game, it can substitute for another symbol, provided that this forms a new combination.
The roles that a single scatter would have in another game are split between two different symbols in this case. The one that gives away the cash prizes is with the Hot Gems Logo on it. Up to five scatter symbols of this type, when present, will pay up to 100 times the bet.
Free Games Feature
The second scatter has the Free Games Logo, it appears on the reels 1, 3 and 5, and when it’s on all three you will get a round with 15 games for free. The difference from the base game is the fact that the collapsing reels have a multiplier. After each collapse of the reels, the multiplier goes up by 1x, with the maximum being 5x. Unfortunately, there is no option to retrigger the free spins.
Betting options and jackpots
Want to place a bet in Hot Gems? You choose how many lines are active, 1 to 25 being the options. You use denominations of up to $50, but with a minimum of only $0.01. You can spend $1,250 on each line.
A 5,000 coins payout is a decent reward. Their highest value will be $250,000, but just how much you take home depends on the denomination.
Design and symbols
The cartoonish design and the slightly rounded appearance of the gemstones makes the slot a lot cuter to look at. The action takes place inside a mine, so you see the stone walls and the wooden logs which are used as braces. The symbols are either gems or things that you would find in a mine.
Symbols: Wild Stone (wild), Hot Gems Logo (scatter, 100x bet), Free Games Logo (scatter), Miner (5,000 coins), Lamp (400 coins), Pickaxe (300 coins), Mining Cart (200 coins), Yellow Gem (80 coins), Red Gem (80 coins), Blue Gem (60 coins), Purple Gem (60 coins), Orange Gem (40 coins) and Green Gem (40 coins).
Is It Worth Playing?
I enjoyed the game’s design, even though the theme is not original, and the features are interesting as well. All in all, it’s not a game to ignore.
This Hot Gems slot is offered by all online casinos with Playtech software, playable either in practice or in real money mode.
