SOFTWARE If you enjoyed the original Balloonies game, it’s worth taking a look at this latest creation by developer IGT, as Balloonies Farm is a top-notch sequel. There’s the same cartoon-like graphics and the fun feel to the reels, giving you plenty of opportunities to play for cash prizes. Balloonies Farm follows around an array of weird looking farm animals made up ofparty balloons. Think about a 5-year-old’s birthday party except the party has now been turned into a slot that allows you to make some decent money. Balloonies Farm is the sequel to the already popular slotBalloonies. Rise to riches with Balloonies Farm, a new novelty slot machine from IGT software with a floating reels feature and free spins with bonus multiplier wilds.
Votes
What do you get if you cross a farmyard with a balloon artist? Balloonies Farm, of course! This slot from IGT is full of fun and entertainment, thanks to its quirky imagery and tunes. It’s set against a backdrop of green fields. Meanwhile, a windmill exists at the left side, while a barn can be seen on the right. There’s also the country sounding twang every time you spin the reels. It’s actually one of the most interestingly and fun designed slot games available today. Of course, the general game theme is one thing, but how does it fare with gameplay? Well, we’re going to have a look at this shortly. But, let’s just say that it provides players with ample speciality rounds and icons. Therefore, all in all, it’s a great IGT offering!
The general layout of this game offers a five reel and three row design. This means that there’s nothing so different about the interface for you to get used to. Alongside these reels and rows you’ll find that there are 20 different pay lines as well. If you have a preference for customising active pay lines, this is not a game that you’re able to do so in. However, you do have the option of changing the value of the wager that you place per spin. This is done with the arrows on either side of the ‘Line Bet’ box. The minimum for this stands at $1 and can increase up to $100. Therefore, a total maximum overall wager of $2,000 per spin can be in play at any time.Further to this, you’ll find that the reels have various different icons on them. These are all in the different forms of balloon shapes. However, the first of these icons exist in the form of the regularly seen A, K and Q options. But, of course, this is a game about a farmyard. Therefore, you’ll find icons on the reels of animal-shaped balloons. There’s a brown and white cow as well as a very crazy looking sheep. Furthermore, there’s a pink pig and a blue dog. It’s the dog which provides players with the highest standard symbol pay out. Should you bring five of them into view on a winning pay line, there’s a maximum pay out of $1,000.
As we said before, the Balloonies Farm game offers up a nice choice of special features alongside the standard game play. This starts with the Floating Reels addition. Any winning combination will trigger the Floating Reels addition and this is available in both the base game and freespins. First of all, wins will go through an evaluation and pay outs given. Then, all winning symbols in the combination disappear. Empty spaces fill up with icons that float up from below. Reels then go through evaluation again and the process continues. This goes on until no further wins can be made. This is a great addition for a slot to have as it means you’re able to form several wins from a single spin.There’s also a wild icon in the game, which is the icon of the star balloon. This one will substitute for all other icons on the reels, with the exception of the bonus balloon. Any star that is a part of a winning combination will also award a multiplier to the win of between times two and times five. In the freespins round, you’re able to choose to reveal whichever multipliers you want. If two or more star icons reveal multipliers during a spin, the multiplier values are combined. Wilds can only show up on the central three reels.
Of course, as we said, there’s a red bonus balloon. If three of these come into view, they will firstly double your total wager. Again, these can only show up on the middle three reels, but three of them will also activate the freespins bonus round. Simply put, you need to select a balloon to choose the number of freespins and possible star multipliers in the round. There’s 15 freespins with a double multiplier as well as 12 freespins with both double and treble multipliers. Alternatively, you can select the nine freespins with three times and five times multipliers. Or, there’s the five freespins with five times and 10 times multipliers.
The original IGT Balloonies game is a player favorite, with its unusual feature where winning combinations disappear and new symbols float up to possible extend the win.
Balloonies Farm sticks to the winning format of the original, while introducing new balloon animals from the farmyard.
The basic video slot format is typical, with 5 reels showing 3 symbols each. The number of paylines is fixed at 20, which means that the minimum bet is 20 coins.
The most powerful of the symbols is the Star, which is wild matching any symbol other than the Bonus symbol. The Star appears only on reels 2, 3, and 4. In addition to completing winning combinations, the Star symbols also contribute a multiplier that will apply to the entire result of the spin.
The rest of the symbols include cows, sheep, and pigs as balloon animals, and the card ranks Q, K, and A.
The important feature of both the original Balloonies game and this restyled version is the ‘float up’ feature. After any winning combination is paid, any star symbols reveal their multiplier which can be 2X, 3X, or 5X in the base game. That multiplier is added to the running total of multipliers for this spin, and displayed on the small notebook near the win tally.
All balloons involved in a winning combination pop and leave an empty spot on the layout. Then, as you would expect of helium-filled balloons, the remaining symbols float up to the fill in the blanks. New symbols are added as needed from the bottom of the screen, and if you’re lucky, you’ll have another winning combination which starts the whole process again. And any additional Star wilds will keep adding to the running total of the multiplier.
The key to really big wins is chaining several of these wins together, along with some star multipliers along the way that apply to the final accumulated total.
Collecting three of the Bonus symbols, which appear only on reels 2, 3, and 4, triggers the bonus round.
Upon triggering the bonus, you have an important decision to make.
Your choices are:
In my experience, when there are two values for the multiplier, you’ll get the lower value far more often than the higher value. Using that information, I settled on the 9 Free Spins option as offering the best return to the player. I’m pretty confident that either the 9 Spins or 5 Spins options are your best bet in the long run, even though the variance will be higher of course.
Although free spins cannot be retriggered during the bonus, you can still generate some big wins if you are lucky.
If you like the original Balloonies, give Balloonies Farm a shot. The farm animals add a cute extra to the theme, and the cumulative multipliers can make for some exciting spins.
Check the list below to find out which NJ casinos currently offer the game. Good luck!
Developer: IGT
Paylines: 20
Min Bet: $0.20