Blaze Buddies: Slot Overview
Blaze Buddies by Backseat Gaming brings a playful twist to the slot world, centering on charming, fantastical creatures. While its name might evoke images of stoners gaming and snacking, this slot is all about dragons—friendly, huggable, and brimming with personality. The game bears a resemblance to the former Microgaming (now Games Global) slot Dragonz, as it introduces a crew of cheerful dragons and focuses on an engaging free spins round enhanced with randomly chosen modifiers. However, the base game is relatively light on features.
Visually and atmospherically, Blaze Buddies exudes feel-good energy, largely thanks to its four smiling dragon characters that instantly create a positive vibe. The base game is set in a serene snowy landscape, offering a calm and simple backdrop with minimal activity. The excitement truly begins in the free spins round, where the setting shifts to a fiery, lava-filled realm teeming with features and modifiers. The contrast between the tranquil base game and the dynamic free spins creates a refreshing duality.
It’s said that a smile makes a great first impression, and Blaze Buddies takes this advice to heart. Its cheerful dragons, coupled with vibrant visuals and engaging gameplay, make for an inviting and entertaining slot experience.
In both the base game and free spins, Blaze Buddies unfolds on a 5×4 reel set, featuring 20 fixed paylines. Wins are calculated from left to right, starting on the leftmost reel. Players can place bets ranging from $/€0.10 to $/€100 per spin. The slot employs a highly volatile math model and offers a maximum RTP of 96.37%, depending on the configuration.
Symbols and Payouts
- High-Paying Symbols: The four cheerful dragon buddies serve as the game’s top-paying symbols, awarding 5x to 20x the bet for landing 5-of-a-kind on a payline.
- Low-Paying Symbols: The standard 10 to A card ranks act as the lower-paying symbols, offering 1.5x to 2x the bet for 5-of-a-kind wins.
With its straightforward mechanics and balanced payouts, Blaze Buddies offers an accessible yet thrilling slot experience, elevated by its vibrant dragon-themed design.
Blaze Buddies: Free Spins and Bonus Features
The true excitement in Blaze Buddies lies within its free spins feature, where a pick-and-play mechanic unlocks various modifiers to enhance the bonus round. Additionally, the game offers bonus buy options for players eager to jump straight into the action.
Free Spins Features
Dragon’s Delight
- Triggered by landing at least 3 scatter symbols in the base game.
- Awards 10 free spins and 3 feature picks at the start.
- Scatters landing on the leftmost and rightmost reels grant additional picks, up to a maximum of 6 in total.
Blaze of Glory
- Triggered by landing 4 or 5 scatter symbols in the base game.
- Grants 10 free spins and 4 or 5 feature picks, depending on the number of triggering scatters.
- Scatters appearing on the leftmost and rightmost reels during the bonus round grant extra picks, capped at 6 in total.
- Once 6 picks are awarded, scatters no longer appear during the bonus round.
Feature Picks
At the start of the free spins round, players select a number of dragon eggs to unlock modifiers based on the number of triggering scatters or the bonus buy configuration. Key modifiers include:
- Expanded Dragon:
- One high-paying dragon symbol lands as a 1×4 expanded symbol, except golden wild dragons.
- Only one dragon can receive this feature per bonus game. Expanded dragons cannot appear on more than one reel.
- Wild Dragon:
- One high-paying dragon symbol transforms into a golden wild.
- If this dragon is expanded, the entire expanded reel becomes wild.
- Wild dragons substitute for all regular symbols and award 20x the bet for a 5-wild win.
- Dragon Multiplier:
- A high-paying dragon symbol is assigned a multiplier ranging from x2 to x100.
- The multiplier applies to all paylines involving this symbol, and multiple multipliers on a single payline are added together.
- Extra Spins:
- Awards +2, +3, or +4 additional spins.
- Extra spins can only be picked once with the initial picks but may also be awarded through retriggers or if more than 3 picks are granted initially.
Bonus Buy Options
For players who prefer skipping the base game, Blaze Buddies provides multiple bonus buy options:
- BonusHunt FeatureSpins (2x the bet): Increases the chance of triggering a bonus game by 3x.
- Scorching FeatureSpins (50x the bet): Ensures all dragons of a single type appear as a wild reel with a multiplier.
- Dragon’s Delight (100x the bet): Direct access to the Dragon’s Delight bonus round.
- Blaze of Glory (200x the bet): Direct access to the Blaze of Glory bonus round.
With its engaging free spins mechanic, unique modifiers, and flexible bonus buy options, Blaze Buddies delivers a feature-packed and dynamic slot experience that’s as entertaining as it is rewarding.
Blaze Buddies: Slot Verdict
While Blaze Buddies shares a similar feel-good vibe with the older slot Dragonz, the two games diverge significantly in terms of gameplay. Both slots exude a cheerful, buddy-up energy with their friendly characters, but Blaze Buddies takes a different approach by keeping its base game minimalistic. This lack of features might leave the base game feeling a bit flat or uneventful since the maximum win cannot be achieved here. However, with a high hit rate of 57.4% (as noted in the game’s documentation), there’s enough action to keep players engaged between bonus rounds.
The free spins feature is where Blaze Buddies truly comes to life. The ability to stack multiple modifiers on individual dragon symbols adds an exciting layer of unpredictability and winning potential. For example, it’s possible to combine expanding symbols with wild transformations or multipliers, creating some thrilling combinations. Alternatively, spreading modifiers across several dragons can also yield satisfying results, as modifiers hit with noticeable frequency during testing. Of course, results will vary in practice, but when the dragons ignite a true firestorm, they can unleash a maximum winning potential of up to 10,000x the stake. With modifiers like multipliers and full reel wilds in play, it’s easy to see how such a win could theoretically occur.
The cheerful dragons and faint nostalgic nod to older slots like Dragonz contribute to Blaze Buddies’ already strong feel-good factor. While the base game may feel like it’s stuck in low gear, the free spins feature, with its dynamic modifiers and potential for big wins, more than makes up for it. When the dragons work their magic, they can spark some truly blazing action.