18+ Only. Play Responsibly.
The Spartan had brought a sword, the other army had brought an elephant, and somewhere between them a war horn kept appearing as though volume might settle the campaign before anybody had to use the horsemen.
That was enough military preparation for the first spin.
€228.80 sat in the balance.
I chose €2.00.
The two warriors stood on opposite sides of the reels, both already dressed for an argument that had apparently been going on for several centuries. The Spartan had shield, sword, red cloak and the general posture of a man who had not travelled this far to discuss compromise. His opponent carried a curved blade and looked equally unconvinced by diplomacy.
Between them sat five tall reels full of cavalry, elephants, horns, letters and armed men.
Ancient warfare had assembled everything except a sensible reason for me to start at €2.
I did anyway.
First spin.
Nothing.
The elephant appeared twice.
A Spartan symbol landed farther over.
One horn.
No useful line.
The armies had deployed successfully and then failed to locate each other.
Second spin returned nothing as well.
The horsemen arrived this time.
Several low symbols surrounded them.
The right-hand warrior continued staring across the grid as if he personally objected to the fact that J symbols had been invited to the invasion.
Third spin finally produced the thing I wanted to see.
Golden crossed spears.
Wild.
It landed on a reel where it could help a combination.
The symbol expanded vertically until that entire reel had become a column of gold.
Then x4 appeared.
There it was.
Five rows of military assistance.
A complete vertical barricade of golden weaponry.
The neighbouring symbols managed to turn all of that into €4.00.
Four euros.
The Spartan had brought an army.
The Empire had brought an elephant.
The reels had erected a full-height x4 Wild.
Result: two stakes.
The column disappeared after the spin.
Apparently the fortifications in the base game were temporary.
Fourth spin.
Blank.
Fifth brought two Scatters.
One on reel one.
One on reel three.
The third needed to arrive on reel five.
It did not.
Instead I got a K.
There were entire cities behind the warriors, several horsemen on the reels and an elephant waiting to be useful, but the decisive reinforcement had been replaced by a letter.
The two Scatters disappeared.
I had now seen enough of the natural route to make a poor decision with confidence.
Sixth spin did nothing.
€220.80 remained.
On the left sat the option to buy the ten Free Spins for 75 times the stake.
At €2.00, that meant €150.
I looked at it for longer than I looked at the armies.
The sensible route was obvious.
Keep spinning.
Let the three Scatters arrive naturally.
Allow history to unfold.
Instead I paid €150 to accelerate ancient warfare.
That left €70.80.
Sparta vs The Empire had spent six spins presenting cavalry, elephants, warriors, Scatters and an expanding x4 Wild, and I had responded by funding the entire campaign myself.
Ten Free Spins began.
The rules were much more dangerous here.
Any expanding Wild that arrived and actually became involved could stay for the rest of the feature.
A golden column could become permanent.
Another could join it.
Their multipliers could add when the same line used both.
That was the battle I had just bought.
Free Spin one produced no Wild.
No win either.
The reels filled with armed men, letters and one elephant.
Ten percent of my €150 military expedition had now been used to display an elephant.
Free Spin two finally brought a Wild.
Reel two.
Golden crossed spears.
The symbol expanded from top to bottom.
x2.
Sticky.
There it was.
My first permanent fortification.
I had paid €150 and the battlefield had given me the smallest available multiplier.
Still, it remained.
A line used it immediately and returned €2.00.
The feature moved on with the x2 column still occupying reel two.
That changed the whole screen.
Every new spin now happened around it.
The Spartan symbols could arrive.
The horsemen could arrive.
Elephants could wander in.
Reel two belonged to the golden x2 until the war ended.
Free Spin three found nothing useful.
The Wild stood there.
Five golden positions.
x2.
The symbols on either side behaved as though it were scenery.
A battle had finally constructed a permanent line of crossed weapons and both armies were largely ignoring it.
Free Spin four used the x2 more effectively.
A matching line passed through.
€4.00.
Fine.
Six euros accumulated from four Free Spins.
The golden column remained.
I started looking at the other reels for reinforcements.
One more Wild with a decent multiplier could change the feature.
x10.
x20.
x50.
Even something less dramatic.
The possible values went far above the little x2 already standing there.
Free Spin five gave me another elephant instead.
No win.
By then the elephant had become one of the most consistently present members of the campaign.
It just had no multiplier and very little interest in paying.
Half the feature was gone.
€6.00 returned.
One permanent x2.
The armies on either side still looked magnificent.
The balance underneath them looked considerably less imperial.
Free Spin six finally delivered the second Wild.
Reel four.
The golden symbol expanded.
I watched the multiplier appear.
x3.
That was it.
x3.
I now owned two permanent golden columns covering forty percent of the battlefield.
One carried x2.
The other x3.
Between them, military history had assembled x5.
A useful line passed through both.
The values added.
x5.
€10.00.
That was the first point where the purchase showed any signs of functioning.
Two vertical Wild reels.
Both permanent.
Three Free Spins after this one.
The Spartan had finally acquired something resembling a route through enemy territory.
Free Spin seven used both again.
x5 combined.
The underlying line was much smaller.
€5.00.
The problem was no longer the Wilds.
They were there.
Reel two was gold.
Reel four was gold.
The problem was everything required to travel through them.
The line still had to begin on the left.
The symbols still needed to connect properly.
Two giant permanent Wild columns could stand across the battlefield looking extremely useful while reel one produced something that had no friends anywhere else.
Free Spin eight did exactly that.
No win.
The x2 stayed.
The x3 stayed.
The Spartan symbol appeared on the first reel.
The next useful symbol beyond the Wilds failed to cooperate.
It looked like a perfectly planned invasion from above.
From the win meter, it looked like zero.
Two spins remained.
I had paid €150.
So far the feature had returned €21.
The battle had acquired permanent golden spear columns, but not the ability to invade a balance.
Free Spin nine finally produced the best arrangement.
Strong symbol on the left.
x2 Wild on reel two.
Matching continuation through the middle.
x3 Wild on reel four.
The final reel cooperated.
Both multipliers belonged to the same winning route.
x5.
The amount climbed to €15.00.
That was the largest win of the entire feature.
Fifteen euros.
The two warriors remained on either side of the reels looking as though one of them had just conquered half the known world.
Between them, I had recovered one tenth of the feature price on the best spin.
One Free Spin remained.
At that point I did not need a third Wild.
I needed several of them and preferably numbers that had survived into double digits.
The tenth spin began.
The x2 stood on reel two.
The x3 stood on reel four.
Horseman.
Horn.
Elephant.
Letters.
Nothing connected correctly from the left.
Zero.
The war ended.
The sticky Wilds disappeared.
Feature total: €36.00.
I had spent €150 to enter.
€106.80 sat in the balance.
For ten spins, the battlefield had gradually constructed two permanent golden walls, assigned them x2 and x3, and then spent most of its time arranging elephants and cavalry in positions where the walls could not help.
The Buy button had done exactly what it promised.
It had brought the battle forward.
That turned out to be the problem.
I went back to the base game.
Same €2 stake.
No attempt to buy another feature.
The €150 experiment had answered that question very efficiently.
First paid spin after the feature.
Blank.
Second.
A normal Wild arrived.
Expanded.
x2.
One little line crossed it.
€4.00.
There was something almost offensive about how familiar that looked.
The feature had spent ten spins constructing permanent Wild reels.
The base game immediately put up one temporary x2 column and paid four euros.
Then it vanished.
Third spin.
Nothing.
Fourth.
One Scatter.
No company.
Fifth.
The war horn landed on the second reel.
A Spartan appeared on the left.
An elephant sat farther right.
Nobody connected.
€100.80 remained.
I had started with €228.80.
The two warriors were still standing on opposite sides of the screen.
The Spartan held his sword.
The man from the Empire held his curved blade.
The elephant remained available.
The horn was on the reels.
After €128 had disappeared, the armies were apparently still waiting for somebody to start.
All Star Fruits spins like it’s testing autoplay limits and moral boundaries.