Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster

Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster: Slot Overview

Year-round riches… What a thought, if only we could click our fingers like Thanos wiping out half of all life in the universe and make it so. Back to reality now, where Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster is the name of an online slot from software provider Red Tiger. This mouthful of a titled game is the fourth in Red Tiger's Clusterbuster series of slots, which have so far revolved around busting or activating positions at the centre of their large grids to trigger various goodies. Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster keeps this tradition going and is accompanied by 4 season-related reel modifiers, free spins, and a duo of feature buys.

Of the four games in the range so far, Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster is arguably the most relaxingly meditative. The background artwork is tastefully designed, all four seasons blending into one, bringing to mind a soothing Japanese woodblock print or the art of Alphonse Mucha. This got the game off to a positive start, boosted after finding out the four seasons concept had been incorporated with the features, as well. It's rather artistically original. Will the good will continue once the reels start spinning?

Speaking of reels, Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster has a colossal 10 by 10 grid setup, with 91 active symbols landing on the board with each press of the spin button. The reason 100 symbols don't hit is that an inactive 3x3 block sits in the middle of the grid, which can trigger features when wins occur next to it in certain ways. To form a win, at least 5 matching symbols must land, connected to each other in horizontal or vertical directions. The cascade mechanic then removes winning symbols, replacing them with symbols tumbling from above. Tumbles will continue to occur like this until no new win is created. Driving the action behind the scenes is a medium volatile math model with a theoretical return to player of 95.74%, or 95.73%, when buying the features. When choosing a stake, the options are 10 p/c to $/€4 per spin.

Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster splits the pay table into low-pay 10-A card royals and high-pay season symbols – winter, autumn, spring, and summer. Hitting a 5 OAK cluster pays out 0.1 to 1.5 times the bet, rising as high as 10 to 250 times the bet for a 35+ size cluster. Wilds, when they appear on the board, are used to substitute for any regular paying symbol.

Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster: Slot Features

The Clusterbuster is a 3x3 inactive block in the middle of the reels. Wins next to the Clusterbuster destroy the adjacent outer positions. The outer positions on the Clusterbuster are divided into 4 sectors representing the 4 seasons of the year – Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. During spins, one of those sectors may become active. Then, breaking all the outer positions belonging to the active season triggers its corresponding feature:

• Spring – reveals a random multiplier of x2, x3, x4, x5, x10, x15, x20, x25, x30, x50, x80, or x100. Multipliers are applied to all wins on the current spin.
• Summer – releases a wave over the reels, which transforms random non-winning symbols into the same random symbol.
• Autumn – causes leaves to fall over the symbols. The leaves transform into wilds.
• Winter – snowballs are pelted at the gaming grid, hitting random symbols. Then, an ice crack moves across the grid, starting from the hit symbols over a random number of non-winning symbols. All symbols the crack passes over transform into the initially hit symbols.

Free Spins

Whenever all outer positions on the Clusterbuster are broken, 10 free spins are granted. On each free spin, at least one random season will be active on the Clusterbuster and up to 4 seasons can be active initially at the start of the same spin. If more than one Season feature is activated, they play in this order – Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Destroying all positions on the Clusterbuster triggers +7 additional free spins.

Bonus Buy

Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster's feature buy menu offers two options. These are a spin with a random Season feature for 15x the bet or free spins for 50x the bet.

Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster: Slot Verdict

If you've played one of the previous Clusterbuster slots, you'll have a fair idea of how Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster functions too. All are played on massive gaming grids and have destroying or activating the Clusterbuster positions in the centre as one of their main objectives. Around this idea, each game has a variety of side features or modifiers, presented using a diverse range of themes. Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster is one of if not the most originally presented of the current quartet of Clusterbuster slots giving players a unique environment to inhabit while trying their fortune. Equally clever is the way the game's maker has paired a feature with each of the year's four seasons.

Triggering one of the four features in the base game was by no means an every-spin event but did occur quite frequently. Leaves and snowballs seemed to be the most common, followed by Summer's tidal wave, then multipliers. Those multipliers might come in handy, too, since clusters don't have the greatest values until reaching the higher tiers. For example, a 15-19 symbol cluster made up of the highest paying symbol is worth a measly 5 times the bet. Still, Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster can bring its seasons and symbols together to turn out shocking results, as attested by its 20,482.1x the bet max win.

What's up with Red Tiger of late? This one's got big potential, Judgement Day stunned with a 100,000x max win, and not long before that, Sugar Monster came along with another 10k+ top prize. It's like the studio is leaning more heavily on the higher potential segment of the market at the moment, though it still drops slots like Here Kitty Kitty, which cater for the opposite end of the spectrum. All in all, Year-Round Riches Clusterbuster adds weight to the Clusterbuster range while doing so in a stylishly artistic way.