Day 35 - Coasters Joyride - Slot Review

On day 35, I took on Coasters Joyride by Butter Slots. The studio has been one of the most hyped under Engine.io lately. It’s an amusement park themed slot where roller coasters paint multiplier wilds onto the grid. It’s a 5x5 grid game with 15 fixed paylines and a 25,000x max multiplier potential, released this year.

Wins pay from left to right on the paylines, with 3 or more matching paying symbols. The symbols are fairground prizes: the candy apple on top, then the carousel horse, the mallet, the park map, the target and the letters. The Wild substitutes for the paying symbols. The Scatter and the ride symbols don’t pay on paylines.

The coasters are the heart of the game. Four rides can land on the grid, and each one paints wilds onto a different shape:

The Log: a downward diagonal of four or five cells. The Caterpillar: a zigzag. The Mine Train: a full row. The Woodie: a mountain shape.

A base spin or Extra Chance can include one coaster at a time, but every free spins feature can use all four. When rides overlap, the wild multiplier doubles, up to 1,024x, and wilds painted during free spins stay on the grid for later spins.

Landing 3, 4 or 5 Bonus symbols triggers the free spins, and there are three versions:

Bonus (3 symbols): 8 free spins, all four coasters can land, and new wilds start at 1x. Super Bonus (4 symbols): 8 free spins, all four coasters can land, and new wilds start at 2x. Hidden Bonus (5 symbols): 8 free spins with at least one coaster on every spin, and new wilds start at 1x.

There’s also a Super Hidden Bonus with at least one coaster on every spin and new wilds starting at 2x, but it can only be triggered by the Random Bonus, not in the base game or with Extra Chance. In all of them, every Bonus symbol you land during the free spins adds one spin.

The plan for winning is to get coasters overlapping so the wild multipliers double, and in the bonus to let the painted wilds stay and build for the next spins.

The hit rate of the special symbols in the base game is super low. I saw them fewer than 5 times in the whole session, which makes it almost impossible to understand what the game has to offer in its core mechanics.

On top of that, the bonus hit rate is extra low too, and I triggered it only 2 times. For a while I thought I wouldn’t trigger it at all, so I’m glad it dropped twice, because the bonus is what shows you what the game is all about. The bonus game is actually quite fun, with the special symbols leaving sticky wilds behind them.

The whole session was pretty much a dead spin show. Both bonuses came in the last 200 spins, and one of them paid 120x, which was the highlight of the session.

It’s one of those games where the base game is almost a waste of your time. If you play with a bonus buy, you’d jump straight to the action and from what I see, you wouldn't be missing out on anything.

1000 Spins APPROVED? NO. The base game and the bonus game feel almost separate from each other, joy ride in the bonus round and a horror ride in the base game.