Hotline review

Hotline is a video slot from NetEnt with 5 reels and 30 paylines. You can play Hotline in online casinos such as YoYo Casino, Mr Green or ComeOn Casino.

Theme and game basics

The theme of Hotline takes us back to the 80s and comes with a Miami Vice kind of vibe. The soundtrack emphasises the atmosphere and makes for surprisingly easy listening in the background. The setting very much reminds us of Miami, somewhere along the boulevard, right by the sea. Neon lights feature and the characters on the reels, two cops and a mysterious lady, all wear 80s attire.
The lady is certainly no damsel in distress. She looks rather as if she’s an accomplished thief who is after all that jewellery littering the reels. In total we only get six different symbols (plus the car wild and the scatter symbol). The woman is worth 200 for a 5-of-a-kind win. The gun-toting cop is worth 120 coins in such a combination and Mr Sunglasses is worth 80.
Particularly neat, by the way, is the expanding wild that will show you a car chase whilst it is on the reels. If you have two or more beside each other, the wilds will merge and the car chase becomes more prominent on the reels, which looks very cool.

Gameplay and features

Hotline comes with the name-giving Hotline feature. At the very least the middle row will appear highlighted and whenever a wild lands there, it will expand, become sticky and you get a re-spin. To increase your odds of this happening, you can place a bonus bet and add hotlines to the top and the bottom row or even choose a combination of any of the three.
Of course, your wager is increased accordingly, but so is your chance of getting an expanding sticky wild and those re-spins, which will keep coming, if more wilds make it onto the reels. That makes the bonus bet entirely worth it.
Plus, this will come in handy when you trigger the free spins. When the scatter lands on reels 1, 3 and 5, you will get 7 free spins. Throughout the feature any wilds will become sticky for the duration of the spins. That means big wins are even more likely.

Conclusion

The theoretical RTP (return to player) for Hotline is 96.13%, which is not the greatest value, but you can still come out on top playing this slot. On our first try, we got two mega wins and a free spin feature within the first 30 spins, which was pretty cool. And we only had one hotline activated.
The next attempt was not quite as successful, but the slot is still a lot of fun to simply play. Hotline is not the most sophisticated slot in NetEnt’s portfolio, but it doesn’t have to be. Its mechanics are quite simple, but they work really well for this slot. If you manage to score a few bigger wins with all three hotlines activated, you’re likely to come out on top. But you may have to budget a little to get there.