In short: Extra Chilli is Big Time Gaming's 2018 follow-up to Bonanza: the same Megaways engine and two-direction cascades, a street-market chilli theme, and free spins with a multiplier that never stops climbing. Its signature is a gamble wheel that lets you risk your 8 free spins for a shot at 24. It gives players more to decide before the bonus than almost any Megaways slot.
Megaways with an extra reel
Extra Chilli was released on 4 April 2018. Six main reels show up to seven symbols each, for up to 117,649 ways, and a horizontal reel of chillies along the bottom moves right to left, feeding extra symbols into the reels above. Winning symbols disappear and new ones cascade in from the top and from the right, the Dual Reactions system first used in Bonanza.
The top pays are four gem-like chillies in green, blue, red and purple, with purple worth the most. The low pays are card values from 9 to A, and the wild is a box of fireworks.
HOT scatters and the uncapped multiplier
Three scatters spelling HOT award 8 free spins, and each extra scatter adds 4. During the round, scatters can also land on the horizontal reel for more spins, and a pot of chillies works as a retrigger scatter. The win multiplier starts at 1 and rises by one after every reaction, with no cap, until the free spins end.
The gamble wheel
Once free spins trigger, a wheel offers a choice: collect the 8 spins or gamble for more, up to a maximum of 24. The first gamble is a straight 50/50, and every later stage is weighted 60/40 in the player's favour, with the spins locked in on the penultimate gamble. Big Time Gaming does not spell out exactly what a failed gamble costs, so the free demo is the place to see it before trying it with real money.
The wheel and the multiplier are linked. Because the multiplier keeps building for the whole round, a longer round gives it more room to climb, so the late spins in a 24-spin round are worth far more than the early ones. The wheel is really a choice about variance: a guaranteed short round, or a gamble on a long one.
RTP, volatility and maximum win
Published figures for this game vary more than usual. Big Time Gaming quotes an RTP range of 96.15% to 96.41%, its newer spec sheet shows 96.63% with a 37.52% hit frequency, and Evolution shows 96.19%. The maximum win is 16,877x the bet in Evolution's figures and 24,236x on Big Time Gaming's spec sheet. Evolution rates the game high volatility and describes it elsewhere as very high.
Operators choose which setting they run, so the RTP in the game's info screen is the one that applies; why the same slot can have different RTP explains how one game ends up with several. Stakes run from 0.20 to 20 per spin. Where it is offered, the bonus buy starts 8 free spins for 40x the stake.
The sequel, briefly
Extra Chilli More Chilli starts its free spins at 10 with a Chilli Bonus attached, adds four Chilli Bonus respin features to the base game, and keeps the uncapped multiplier and a gamble wheel. Its RTP runs from 96.39% to 96.45%, with a maximum exposure of 30,000x the stake.
How it plays
As in Bonanza, the base game is mostly a wait for scatters, and everything that matters happens in free spins: the extra scatters, the multiplier and the gamble. In the free demo, watch how the multiplier counter moves after each reaction, and try the wheel a few times to get a feel for how often a gamble pays off before deciding how to approach it with real stakes.
