Balloon Race Live from Evolution

OK from the outset let’s get something straight about Balloon Race Live. There’s not much that is live about it.

Balloon Race Live is predominantly an RNG slot game. If you’re lucky or patient enough, you will win through to the Balloon Race bonus round. This is the live component of the game, hosted (sort of) by a presenter.

You’ll spend considerably more time playing the slot part than the live part.

Having to endure a slot game to win the privilege of playing a live hosted bonus game isn’t a new concept. Evolution introduced us to it with Crazy Pachinko.

The mechanics of Crazy Pachinko is actually very similar. It too has slot qualifying with options to buy quicker qualification, then a top up round, then a presenter hosted live bonus game (with Crazy P outcomes are determined by a pachinko wall). The main difference with Balloon Race Live, is that it’s a ball machine driving the bonus round outcomes.

Qualifying phase – Balloon Race Slot

As mentioned at the outset, this is where you’ll spend the majority of your time while playing Balloon Race Live.

Just pick your per spin bet amount (€$0.10 to €$50), hit SPIN and hope for the best. 3 Scatters or 3 Wilds on any of the win lines gets you into the bonus game.

For a price you can expedite things with:

• XXXtreme spin mode guaranteeing 1 Scatter or Wild, costing 5x your bet amount per spin
• Super XXXtreme mode guaranteeing 2 Scatters or Wilds, costing 50x your bet amount per spin

Playing these modes also increases your chances of betting bigger multipliers on the bonus round.

Top Up phase

Once you’ve qualified, you have the option to top up your bet bet amount while waiting for the next live bonus game to begin.

Balloon Race Bonus Round phase

Then, finally, it’s off to the races. The balloon races.

The presenter and ball machine come into view. The ball draw machine is physical. The presenter is real, but for all intent and purposes they could be animated.

The machine contains 80 balls, 20 of colour yellow, purple, green red. Each time a colour is dropped from the machine the balloon of corresponding colour rises 1 step. It’s a 5 step race.

Waiting at the end of the race is the winning multiplier value that will be applied to your original (or topped up) bet amount. These are randomly generated at the start of the game and will be different for each player depending on the path to qualification (normal, XXXtreme or Super XXXtreme spins etc).

In the example game round green was the big paying balloon. Unfortunately purple came in for a very modest 7x payout.

Balloon Race Live Theoretical Returns

Here’s are the returns by spin mode playing this game.

BET	Balloon RTP	Crazy RTP
Normal Spins	96.09%	96.04%
XXXTreme Spin	96.00%	96.05%
SuperXXXTreme Spin	96.03%	96.05%
Top Up	96.05%	95.01%

For comparison the return on equivalent spins on Crazy Pachinko is set out in the right column. It shows just how close these games are.