The Phoenix Sun slot game is all about turning a small, unassuming slot grid into a massive one with over 7,000 paylines. This gradual increase in how much you can win is at the heart of this beloved slot, and it works quite well. It’s also quite neatly presented through an admittedly played-out Egyptian theme.
Much like the legendary phoenix rises from its ashes, consecutive respins will cause the reels to almost double in size. We love it when a top slot game meshes its theme and mechanics this way – and it makes for some exciting action, too.
When you first sit down to play Phoenix Sun by Quickspin, there isn’t much to it. Half the board is hidden, leaving you with a modest 5×3 slot grid. You’ll need to get the Phoenix Rising feature rolling to really get this game off the ground. We’ll cover how that works later in this Quckspin Phoenix Sun review.
The basics are quite simple. There are no fixed paylines in this game, which is why there are so many ways to win. You simply need to arrange identical symbols from left to right, starting with the leftmost reel. The row in which the symbols appear doesn’t matter, as long as the arrangement is uninterrupted. This means that expanding the reels significantly increases your chances of winning.
As we mentioned already, the Phoenix Sun slots really kick off once you get into special features. The first of these is a simple Wild symbol. No surprises there – the golden Wilds simply replace all regular symbols.
However, the red Phonix Wild is where things get interesting. Every time you hit a winning combination with a Phoenix Wild symbol, it will remove three tiles from the closed rows at the top of the table. This expands the grid and increases your chances of winning. Additionally, you’ll get a free respin with this expanded layout.
If you hit another Phoenix Wild, even more tiles will be removed and you’ll keep getting respins. If you collect 5 Phoenix Wilds this way, you’ll get 8 free spins. Phoenix Sun free spins are played on the full 5×6 grid with 7,776 betways.
That pretty much covers the extra features – there are no Scatters or other special symbols. However, stringing together several Phoenix Wilds impacts the experience in a major way and rakes in a lot of cash.
Despite the massive number of possible winning combinations, the game is not extremely volatile in and of itself. There are still 10 regular symbols, though, which brings the variance up to a Medium level.
Essentially, the 6 low-paying symbols are all different cards ranging from 10 to Ace. They all pay out the same amount, though, maxing out at 0.8x for 5 symbols.
Out of the 5 high-paying symbols, three are also identical – the dog, cat, and scarab. The pharaoh and the princess are the jackpots here, going up to 4x. However, individual strings of symbols are not exactly jaw-dropping. If you want the Phoenix sun maximum payout, you’ll want to get multiple winning lines per spin. Thankfully, having 6 rows make this a lot easier.
Though several years have passed since the Quickspin Phoenix Sun game was released, it remains a fairly original experience. Sure, expanding rows are nothing new, but few games put this feature in the spotlight as much as Phoenix Sun. The plus side is that you can get a lot of mileage by investing just one spin. On the other hand, the slot sometimes feels like a one-trick pony.
Overall, it’s a fairly small and simple slot that probably won’t be anyone’s all-time favourite. However, it’s still worth trying out, and offers surprising longevity. The solid RTP contributes a lot as well – and it means you certainly won’t regret deciding to play Phoenix Sun for real money.