Fruit Blox slot review

Fruit Blox offers us some incredibly tasty fruit blocks to look at as the game puts clusters together and granting us delicious wins. With the aid of multipliers and random wilds, there is plenty to experience.

Fruit Blox was developed and released in 2018 by Red Tiger, who stepped away from their usual Asian theme and instead went for fruit as inspiration. The game has a 6x4 playing field that doesn’t use betlines but instead counts blocks of connected symbols that are at least 5 blocks big.

The different tiles are huge when compared to the total slot size, leaving no space for any kind of background. Instead, the symbols fill up the entire screen, which makes it a good thing the symbols are highly detailed and animated. My only complaint would be that the orange and lemon symbols are quite similar, sometimes making it a little harder to see the difference than it had to be.

The slot has no particularly interesting soundtrack but it does sound good and fits the theme. It is a quick, summery beat with electronic sounds. Wins and free spin triggers ramp up before they explode in a happy jingle.

Symbols

The symbols in this slot are mostly based on fruit although there are also some symbols that come from the classic fruit machines. They are all drawn in a special style, which looks excellent even on a large monitor. The symbols also come animated when part of a win, bouncing and moving. The symbols are from highest to lowest:

• Free Spins: Get 1 Free Spins symbol or more to trigger the Free Spins mode.
• Wild: Wilds substitute all paying symbols in the game.
• 7: Max. 2x your bet with six-of-a-kind in a cluster.
• Star: Max. 1.6x your bet with six-of-a-kind in a cluster.
• Bell: Max. 1.4x your bet with six-of-a-kind in a cluster.
• BAR: Max. 1.2x your bet with six-of-a-kind in a cluster.
• Grapes: Max. 1x your bet with six-of-a-kind in a cluster.
• Strawberry: Max. 0.8x your bet with six-of-a-kind in a cluster.
• Orange: Max. 0.6x your bet with six-of-a-kind in a cluster.
• Lemon: Max. 0.5x your bet with six-of-a-kind in a cluster.
• Cherries: Max. 0.4x your bet with six-of-a-kind in a cluster.

Note that the listed max. win is not exactly what you will get from the win but it seems to be the value per reel, set against the total win. In my experience, a six-of-a-kind would always be more than the coin bet, even with the lowest-paying symbols. Still, because of the High Volatility, this was rarely enough to compensate for the losses. Players can bet between £0.10 and £10 per spin to balance this risk.

Features

Fruit Blox doesn’t use a lot of features to balance out the gameplay. Nonetheless, I found the features that are included to be rather effective at providing me with bigger wins. The features are:

• Wilds: Wilds substitute all other symbols in the game. During the Free Spins mode, a random symbol is picked as a Wild.
• Cluster Pays: Wins are not based on betlines but getting at least 4 symbols in a group will award a coin win, as long as the cluster starts on reel 1 and the tiles are connected horizontally or vertically.
• Multipliers: Whenever two colossal symbols are touching, they increase the multiplier by 1.
• Free Spins: Get a Free Spins colossal symbol on the screen to activate the Free Spins mode. More Free Spins symbols grant more Free Spins.
• Colossal Symbols: 3x3 Colossal Symbols can appear on the screen at any time.

The game is already a big change from the standard slot experience with its cluster pays mechanic, something emphasised by the features. Tree spins mode popped up often to be an intricate part of the game. All the features that exist in the base game carry over to the free spins mode too.

The Wilds appear rarely during the base game and didn’t really help me in getting a lot of wins. However, during the free spins mode, a random symbol is chosen to substitute as a wild. Since these can also appear as a Colossal Symbol this sometimes resulted in big wins. It’s these type of combinations that players are dependant on to refill their funds as they spin.

With the ability to pick a bet between £0.10 and £10 Fruit Blox doesn’t offer as much flexibility as other slots but even with the lowest bet per spin, it can drain your funds quickly. I found that the high volatility mostly showed itself by the time between wins, as wins during the base game did have the opportunity to be big enough to be interesting.

In Conclusion

Fruit Blox is a very pretty slot with big, beautiful tiles. The gameplay might be too experimental for a lot of players as there is no use of paylines. The Colossal Symbols and the random wilds during the Free Spins mode helped in creating some big wins. During the base game, getting big enough clusters to make back my bets was very important to be able to keep going.

Players that enjoy a more modern slot will likely have a very good time playing this game. I really enjoyed the big tiles that gave a lot of room for the beautiful symbols. The cluster mechanic didn’t take long to figure out and the game was very obvious about showing what resulted in a win. Activating the free spins mode was similarly explicit and showed a selection screen where a random symbol was picked as a wild.

The only thing players should be careful about is their funds since the high volatility means that it can quickly diminish their coins. Even though there are big wins to be won during the base game, it was more likely during the free spins mode.