Balloon Race Live: Our Review, How and Where to Play

The qualification phase of Balloon Race Live is the “slot” part of the whole thing. It’s completely based on computer-generated random numbers (RNG) with no real “live” element. It’s also mostly seen as a way of qualifying for the bonus round.

Generally, it’s very simple and fast-paced – just like most slot machines. The slot itself has 5 reels and 3 rows, so its layout is fairly common for modern online slots. It also has 10 fixed paylines.

As is always the case with slots, your goal is to arrange three or more matching symbols along one or more of these paylines. Every time you do, you get a payout based on the number and value of the winning symbols.

The slot contains 7 types of regular symbols and 2 special ones. The regular symbols, in order of increasing value, are 10, J, Q, K, A, Bronze Ribbon, and Silver Ribbon.

The special symbols include Scatters and Expanding Wilds. Such special symbols are found in almost every slot nowadays. Here’s what they do:

• Expanding Wilds can substitute for any other symbol to make winning lines. Every time one appears on the board, it expands and covers all three positions on its current reel.
• Scatter Symbols can win anywhere on the board without regard to their positions or paylines. Hitting 3 in the same spin qualifies you for the next Bonus Round. Scatters may also come with random multipliers of up to 10x attached to them. If you qualify for the bonus round using one of these, the multiplier increases any resulting winnings.

You can increase your chances of qualifying for the bonus round using the XXXTreme spin modes.

• XXXTreme Spins cost 5x your stake with every spin. However, they guarantee at least 1 Wild or Scatter on every spin and increase the chances of Scatters having multipliers.
• Super XXXTreme Spins cost a whopping 50x per spin, but guarantee at least 2 Scatter/Wild symbols and greatly increase Scatter multipliers.

The Top-Up phase offers a chance to potentially increase your winnings in the Bonus Round. It is only available to players who have already qualified for the upcoming bonus round. Note that this phase is completely optional – you can just sit back and wait for the bonus round to kick off without doing anything. Similarly, if you want to play the Top-Up round but don’t have time because the bonus is about the begin, you can choose to “skip” the bonus round. You still get to participate, of course – you’ll just have to wait for the next bonus round while playing Top-Up in the meantime.

As for the minigame in this phase, it’s quite simple. Whenever you click the “Top Up” button, 3-6 balloons are released. Each balloon contains a multiplier value. 

The balloons float up to the top and end up in one of four positions – Yellow, Purple, Green, or Red. Each balloon increases the reward of that position by its own displayed value. Alternatively, balloons may pop while flying, in which case their multiplier is lost.

Note that the Top Up game in Balloon Race Live does not actually have any direct prizes. Instead, it increases potential winnings in the upcoming bonus round.

With that in mind, the “stake” you use for this round is not used for payouts. Instead, higher bets create balloons with bigger multipliers.

Once the next Bonus Round is about to begin, you’ ‘ll get a pop-up message. Click “Bonus” to move onto the next phase, or “Top Up” to stay in this phase.

After the Top-Up phase, a plane will unleash random multipliers for each colour. These multipliers will be multiplied by the scatter multipliers, then added to your Top-Up multiplier to determine the final multipliers for the live Bonus game.

The Balloon Race bonus game takes you to the sky-high studio of the actual live casino game. This is the only part of the whole game that is actually live, using real presenters and a real bingo-style ball-drawing machine.

After the Top-Up phase, a plane will unleash random multipliers for each colour. These multipliers are multiplied by any multipliers you had on your Scatter symbols, then added to any multipliers secured during the Top-Up phase. This results in four distinct prizes you can see at the top – Yellow, Purple, Green, and Red. Each of these positions also has a corresponding hot air balloon, which starts the bonus round at the bottom of the screen.

The Bonus game features a ball drawing machine with 80 balls in yellow, purple, green and red. There are exactly 20 balls of each of the four colors.

The presenter will start drawing these balls from the machine. Every time a ball is drawn, the hot air balloon of the corresponding color moves upwards. The game continues drawing balls and moving the balloons until one of them reaches the top.

The first hot-air balloon to reach its prize wins. All participating players collect a payout based on the multipliers collected for the corresponding color. While the winning color is always the same for all qualified players, the prizes aren’t. Your actual payout depends on the results of the slot machine and Top-Up round.