The Falcon Huntress Slot

The Thunderkick studio is truly one of the most interesting things to have happened to online slot design in recent years. As a game maker, Thunderkick has produced some of the most creative online slots like the Flame Busters, Luchadora, or the Rift, each offering something unique to its players and each being a fine example of how well-made an online slot game can be.  From their stunning graphics to the mood they can trigger in their players, most of Thunderkick slots offer an experience that isn’t easy to forget.

However, when you take a studio that has made such forays into creative game design and you tell it to make something more traditional, you actually end up with a slot game like the Falcon Huntress. A little different than the rest of Thunderkick's portfolio, this online slot was built for the Asian market and thus features a more classic look and feel, although not without Thunderkick's proprietary touch.

The end result is an interesting slot machine that doesn't awe you visually like some of the studio's other games do but at the same time it fully immerses you into its world, making it easy to lose track of time and forget about your surroundings. And, like all Thunderkick slots, this game was built with mobile players in mind and can be enjoyed just as easy no matter whether you’re playing on a laptop or your phone/tablet. 

Falcon Huntress Slot Graphics, Sounds, and Basic Features

The Falcon Huntress was inspired by a legend of the Golden Falcon, which, according to Thunderkick, can "lead one to great treasures". Like a number of other games meant to attract Asian audiences or fans of Asian culture, Falcon Huntress features traditional symbols and graphics that were designed to look as though they were hand-woven onto the reels.

The game comes with 5-reels and 3 rows of symbols and only 9 fixed paylines. To match the theme, the reels are built like a door to a stone temple that overlooks Mongolian mountains and grasslands. As you hit the spin button, don't get surprised if you start feeling shivers down your spine from autosuggestion caused by the ethereal sound effects of winds, pan flutes, and wind chimes that add a dose of mystery to the playing experience.

With a presentation like only Thunderkick can build, the studio has created a slot game that looks similar to many Asian-themed slots but at the same time feels so different from them.  So, if you’re a fan of such slots and don’t care about any progressive jackpot prizes, the Falcon Huntress is certainly worth putting on your list. Because even though it doesn’t offer huge cash-outs like some Asian-themed slots do, it still has a few extras that are well worth noting.

Falcon Huntress Slot Symbols and Payouts

Like many other Thunderkick slots, the Falcon Huntress has fixed paylines, which means that you won't be able to individually select which paylines you want active and thus adjust your bet in that way. There is only one way to set up your bet here and that is to select the total amount you want to spend on every spin. Thus, the payouts are calculated according to your total bet size, and not bet per line.

The minimum you can bet per spin in this game is £0.10 while the maximum can go up to £100. And if you want to automate your playing sessions, you can easily do so with the Auto Play controls that let you specify the number of rounds you want the slot to play out as well as set up a stop when any feature is won.

The paytable of the game can be said to be standard in the sense that it features two individual groups of symbols: high-paying thematic symbols and lower-paying standard symbols. The higher paying symbols are, naturally, all picture symbols inspired by falcons. These are your Falcon, Falcon Huntress, the Falcon Hood (that you put on a falcon's head), as well as the Falcon Egg. Apart from these symbols, the game also has 5 card symbols with a Mongolian makeover that start with the Ace and continue with the King, Queen, Jack, and the 10 as the lowest symbol of them all.

Payments in the game are made by collecting either at least 2 symbols on an active payline in the case of the 2 top-paying symbols, or at least 3 of any other symbol. The Falcon Huntress, which is the top-paying symbol in the game, for example, can pay you 1.5x your bet even when you collect 2 of it on any payline. That's a £1.50 win for a £1 bet, giving you a £0.5 return per combination. But where the real money starts pouring in is when you collect 5 of these symbols on your paylines, which can get you a payout of 500x your bet for 1 winning combination. And, as each payline can trigger a single winning combination, you are looking at a theoretical max payout that's 4,500x your bet size.

Other symbols in the game aren't as generous, though, and offer rewards that can be at least 3 times smaller than the Falcon Huntress. The lowest possible payouts are given by the card symbols, which even when you collect 5 of them will pay out only 10-15x your bet per winning combination. However, this isn't the case with the Falcon Wild symbol which also has a pay table that pays between 2 and 200 times your bet when you collect 3 or 5 of the symbols on a payline, respectively. 

Falcon Huntress Slot RTP

Falcon Huntress is a game with a theoretical RTP (Return to Player) rate of 96.1%. As online slot games go, this is a fair return percentage that many online software providers stick to in their newer slot titles. As for the volatility, this is a medium-variance game, which means you can expect both low and high payouts from your sessions, depending on your luck. 

Falcon Huntress Slot Bonus Games

The bonus rewards in the Falcon Huntress mostly start with the Falcon Wild symbol which plays a double role of being a Wild and a Scatter symbol in the game. When there are only 1 or 2 Falcons on the reels, the symbol acts as a Wild and replaces any other symbol to trigger the best possible win. When acting as a Scatter, though, it really does “lead one to great treasures” by activating the Free Spins bonus game.

The Free Spins bonus is triggered when you collect 3 or more Falcon symbols anywhere on the reels. If you do, the temple doors will open and you will be transported inside the building to uncover some of the treasures that lie within it. The total number of Free Spins you can win is 10 and you can also trigger them again if you collect 3 more Scatters during the rounds.

Apart from the Free Spins, another extra that the Falcon Huntress hides is the Expanding Win feature, which can be triggered both in the base game as well as the bonus round. In a nutshell, the Expanding Win is a feature that can expand any winning symbol across a reel to give you an even better win than the one that started it. The feature can be randomly triggered during any spin and it works on every symbol in the game except for the Wild symbols.

The trick with this feature is that each symbol expands individually and only once. Thus, you can end up having only some symbols expanded or, theoretically, you can have them all expanded to cover your entire screen with the same symbols. The feature works the same way whether you're playing a Free Spins round or just the base game. 

Falcon Huntress Slot Verdict

Most of Thunderkick's game collection is made up of slots that bring great entertainment value to the table, apart from bonuses, much like slots from NetEnt or Microgaming. However, the Falcon Huntress strays from this course a bit by heading towards a more traditional path. Aesthetically, and entertainment-wise, this game doesn't impress you like some other slots from the company do. However, that doesn't mean it’s not worth playing.

The bottom line is that this is a standard slot game with a fair return rate and medium volatility that can end up paying solid returns on your money with the right amount of luck. And since it is also mobile-optimized and can be played for as little as £0.10 per spin, you probably won't find an excuse to not give it a shot.