18+ Only. Play Responsibly.
It took me far too long to understand that the airplane was allowed to be useless.
It could land directly on the reels.
Propeller turning.
Blue fuselage.
Little cockpit.
Perfectly good aircraft.
And if neither the Airplane nor the symbols it would transform belonged to a win, it simply sat there.
No smoke.
No climb.
No Wilds.
Just aviation.
The first few times that happened, I watched the reel above it anyway.
Nothing moved.
Willy’s hangar carried on around it with wrenches, radios, pilot caps, fuel cans and a red rocket that looked much more dangerous than its payouts suggested.
On the left, the Smoke Machine had a face.
That should have been warning enough.
It had arms, gloves, cheeks and a huge funnel sticking out of its head.
Whenever it activated, smoke blobs could appear over regular symbols and become Wilds.
Sometimes they carried multipliers.
The machine looked delighted with itself every time.
The airplane looked like transport.
The smoke machine looked like a household appliance that had discovered gambling.
I began at €0.20.
For a while, that was enough.
A few pilot-cap lines.
A wrench combination.
The rocket paying once.
A Smoke Machine activation that threw three white clouds across the grid and managed to put all three in places where they contributed almost nothing.
One had x2.
No useful line crossed it.
The Smoke Machine still waved.
Another Airplane landed on reel 4.
No qualifying win.
No spread.
The propeller spun.
That was all.
By the time the fifth one had landed without producing Wild Smoke, I had started examining the symbols above it before the reels even finished settling.
Airplane low on reel 2.
Radio above.
Ten above that.
No line.
Forget it.
Airplane in the middle of reel 5.
Fuel can above.
Rocket above that.
Still no useful combination.
Stay parked.
That was the whole relationship.
The aircraft did not spread because it existed.
It spread when the surrounding symbols gave it permission.
Thirty-odd cheap spins had already turned that distinction into a personal grievance.
The purple FS balls were not helping.
Two appeared together once.
Then one.
Later another pair.
The four-row reels had enough space to show me plenty of bonus colour without ever assembling the three required for the ordinary Free Spins.
I stayed at €0.20 until the balance had lost enough little pieces to make the Ante button look interesting.
That was the mistake.
Normal play was twenty times the base unit.
Ante was sixty.
Three times the cost for a much better chance of the natural feature.
I turned it on.
€0.60 per spin.
The hangar did not become three times more competent.
First Ante spin:
wrench.
Radio.
Pilot cap.
No win.
Second:
Airplane.
It landed low.
Symbols above it almost lined up.
Almost did not count.
No smoke.
Sixty cents had purchased a stationary cartoon plane.
A few spins later, another Airplane finally worked.
It landed on reel 3 inside a line involving the grinning rocket.
The plane spread upward.
Every symbol above it changed into Wild Smoke.
A vertical cloud rose through the reel.
One smoke position carried x3.
The win crossed it.
€3.60.
There.
That was what I had been waiting for.
The plane had earned altitude.
The Smoke Machine bounced beside the reels as though it had contributed.
It had not.
This one belonged to the airplane.
The next twelve Ante spins were much less productive.
Two FS balls.
No third.
One Airplane that did not spread.
One that did spread but only helped €1.20 through.
The little pilot cap paid.
The radio did not.
The balance had started to feel the difference between twenty-cent patience and sixty-cent impatience.
Then four FS symbols landed together.
Three purple.
One orange.
The Super Scatter.
The screen filled with colour before I had time to regret Ante Bet properly.
Fifteen Super Free Spins.
The first spin guaranteed Wilds.
It delivered three.
One Wild Smoke landed high on reel 2 with x2.
Another appeared lower on reel 3 with x3.
A third sat on reel 5 without a multiplier.
They stayed.
Sticky.
The hangar had immediately become easier to read.
Three pieces of smoke were no longer temporary accidents.
They were furniture.
The first win used reel 2 and reel 3.
The x2 and x3 both sat inside the same combination.
The multipliers added into the win through their separate Wild Smoke positions.
The line came to €4.80.
Not huge.
Useful.
More importantly, the smoke remained.
Second Free Spin.
An Airplane landed beneath the sticky x3 smoke on reel 3.
This time it participated.
The plane spread upward.
The existing Wild Smoke stretched with the new cells.
A fresh x2 joined the sticky block.
The multiplier attached to that smoke column climbed.
The little blue aircraft had flown directly into an existing supernatural weather system and improved it.
Willy Wildwing had apparently solved aviation by turning clouds into permanent runway equipment.
The next line crossed that expanded Wild area.
€6.30.
The Smoke Machine waved from the side.
Again.
Still taking credit.
Third Free Spin.
The machine itself activated.
Five Wild Smoke symbols puffed into random positions.
One carried x4.
Another x2.
Two of them joined the same winning line.
The multipliers added before applying to the win.
€5.40.
Smoke everywhere now.
Some sticky from the feature.
Some newly dropped.
The original grid was starting to look less like a hangar and more like somebody had tested every engine indoors.
The fourth spin produced almost nothing.
Sticky Wilds stayed in place.
Wrench.
Cap.
Ten.
Fuel can.
One tiny line through a normal Wild Smoke position.
€0.60.
The feature did not care that several reels were already contaminated.
It could still produce the financial equivalent of a vending-machine refund.
Then another Airplane landed.
Reel 4.
Low.
A winning line passed through its transformed positions.
Up it went.
Smoke climbed all the way to the top.
One of the new Wild Smoke cells carried x5.
That column stayed sticky too.
Now reels 2, 3 and 4 all had persistent smoke.
The next spin lined the red rockets through two of them.
€8.10.
That was the best hit so far.
The rockets grinned.
The clouds multiplied.
The Smoke Machine threw both arms up.
Nobody in the hangar seemed concerned that visibility had reached approximately zero.
The middle of the feature turned into a series of partial takeoffs.
A plane on reel 1 failed to spread because nothing useful touched it.
It stayed a non-paying symbol and vanished.
Another on reel 5 did spread, turning the positions above into more Wild Smoke.
No multiplier.
Still useful.
The sticky cloud arrangement had begun to make ordinary symbols dangerous.
Pilot caps no longer needed much help.
A line crossing two smoke reels paid €3.00.
Wrenches did €2.40.
The radio managed a win through the x5 column.
Then came the biggest smoke interaction.
A new Wild landed vertically adjacent to the sticky block on reel 3.
x3.
It expanded the block again.
The existing smoke multiplier increased with it.
That column had been building since the second Free Spin.
Now it carried enough value that I stopped caring what actual symbol might connect through it.
The next drop supplied rockets on reels 1 and 2.
Smoke on reel 3.
Another matching rocket on 4.
Line complete.
€11.70.
The feature total finally moved into territory that justified the higher Ante cost.
Six spins remained.
No retrigger was possible.
That helped.
There was nothing else to chase inside the feature.
The remaining job was simple: make the sticky smoke useful before the counter reached zero.
The next spin produced no Airplane.
The Smoke Machine did not activate.
A small cap line crossed one Wild.
€1.20.
Then a plane arrived on reel 2 and failed to spread.
That was almost funny now.
Half the grid was already Wild Smoke and this particular aircraft still managed to land in a position where it could not contribute to anything.
It sat there under a cloud.
No takeoff.
No spread.
Gone.
Three spins remained.
The Smoke Machine fired again.
Four new Wild Smoke symbols.
One x2.
No major line.
€1.80.
Then a red rocket win crossed the older x5 smoke column.
€4.50.
Last spin.
No dramatic Super Scatter.
No giant cloud multiplier.
A single Airplane landed on reel 4, but the surrounding symbols did not make a win.
The plane remained grounded.
The sticky smoke stayed glowing around it until the counter disappeared.
The feature finished at €49.80.
Not an epic flight.
Not a hangar disaster.
Enough.
I switched Ante Bet off immediately.
Back to €0.20.
The first normal spin after fifteen Super Free Spins looked almost empty without sticky smoke.
Wrench.
Q.
Pilot cap.
Airplane.
The aircraft landed low on reel 3.
This time the symbols above it were part of a win.
It spread.
A neat column of Wild Smoke climbed to the top.
One of the clouds carried x2.
The line paid €1.60.
The cheapest spin I had played in a while produced a perfectly functional takeoff.
The Smoke Machine bounced beside the reels.
Willy’s little airplane sat under the cloud column with its propeller still turning.
I left them both claiming it.
The wilds in Area Link Dragon Ascension aren’t symbols. They’re threats.