Striking Hot 5 Slot

Pragmatic Play is a company that loves to develop old-school slot games. Striking Hot 5 is another example of this. The game strips away modern mechanics and fancy graphics, opting to provide its players with a simple gameplay experience that recreates the feeling of spinning a fruit machine down the local arcade, pub, or at our recommended slots sites. Those who champion these kinds of games will argue that this nostalgia is their selling point. Detractors will argue that these games are easy to make and are just churned out with little to no thought. Which of the two does Striking Hot 5 prove right? Let’s take a more detailed look into this Striking Hot 5 slot review and find out.

When you load up Striking Hot 5, you can be forgiven for thinking it is one of Pragmatic Play’s oldest online slot games. The game actually hit virtual shelves in 2022, but the company has done very little to showcase any sort of innovation. The game has a simple red background, with the reels themselves being dark blue. The symbols are inspired by classic fruit machines, with watermelons, grapes, lemons, and the iconic number 7 all making appearances. There is a cheery, almost arcade-like soundtrack running in the background as you spin the reels, but outside of this, there is very little of note here.

Pragmatic Play has very much doubled down on the fruit-machine approach with Striking Hot 5. The gameplay here is about as basic as it comes. The game unfolds across five reels and three reels, with just five paylines. Unlike a lot of retro-style slots, though, these are not marked around the outside of the grid. Players will have to hit the ‘i’ button in the bottom corner to view the lines, as well as all of the symbols and their values.

The game’s stake is adjusted using the +/- buttons on either side of the Spin button. The lowest bet is $0.05, and the maximum is $100. This is a good betting range, and it is definitely going to appeal to those who play with smaller budgets.

It would be easy to think that Striking Hot 5 is just an old-fashioned slot that hasn’t bothered to keep up with the modern conventions of slot gaming because, for the most part, it is. One area it hasn’t neglected, though, is mobile play. The slot has been fully optimized by Pragmatic Play to work across a range of different devices and screen sizes. The simple design of the game means that it loses nothing in the transition to the smaller screen, and slots for mobile are best enjoyed when played in landscape mode.

You will find a total of zero bonus features here. Zilch. Nada. Pragmatic Play has simply put together a fruit-machine-style slot and left it at that. There is a Scatter Symbol here, but it doesn’t trigger any sort of bonuses. It does pay for any position on the reels, but that’s about the only highlight. There isn’t even a Wild Symbol in the slot.

The Striking Hot 5 RTP is one of its stronger suits. The game has a return to player of 96.29%, putting it higher than the average of 96%. It has been given a 4.5/5 volatility rating, putting it firmly in the high range. The maximum win that can be won in the slot is 5,000x the player’s stake. This is won by landing five of the number seven symbols in one spin.

Striking Hot 5 is an online slot that struggles to justify its own existence. Pragmatic Play has a catalog of retro-style slot games in its portfolio, and we can only assume that it decided it needed an extra title. Like other titles it has delivered, including the Shining Hot slot games, there is very in the way of innovation or gameplay features here. With no bonuses and a fairly average maths model, Striking Hot 5 does little to separate itself. On the whole, you can find a lot better titles from Pragmatic Play.