Balloon Race — Bonus Features
Balloon Race runs on three linked stages: a 5x3 qualifier you have to beat, an optional Top-Up that inflates your finish-line numbers, and a live race between four balloons and 80 balls. Here's how each one works.
How Each Stage Pays
Trigger conditions, what the multipliers do, and where each stage is worth your money. If you have never sat through a round, start with the Balloon Race how-to-play guide.
Qualification Slot
How to Trigger
Land three special symbols — scatters, Expanding Wilds, or any mix of the two — on a single spin of the 5x3 grid.
What Happens
The qualifier is a conventional slot and it is deliberately unglamorous. Five reels, three rows, ten fixed winlines, card ranks from 10 to Ace at the bottom of the paytable and ribbon symbols above them. Line wins here are small change. What you're actually spinning for is the special symbols: scatters, which can arrive with a multiplier attached, and the Expanding Wild, which fills its entire reel and substitutes for every symbol except the scatter. Three specials in one spin ends the qualifier and books your seat in the next live round.
Multipliers
The qualifier itself contributes multipliers rather than cash. Scatter symbols can land with a multiplier value printed on them, and every one you collect feeds into the colour multipliers you take into the race. An Expanding Wild carries no multiplier of its own — it helps you reach three specials and completes line wins on the way.
Variants
Three spin modes share the same reel set. Normal Spin runs at your base bet and 96.09% RTP. XXXtreme Spin costs 5x the base bet and guarantees one special symbol per spin, at 96.00%. Super XXXtreme costs 50x, guarantees two specials, and returns 96.03%.
Strategy
The published RTP drops as you pay to qualify faster, which tells you what you are buying: time, not value. Normal spins keep the best return and the longest wait. The XXXtreme modes make sense when you want to reach the live round in a fixed number of spins — during a stream, before a break, or when you just want to see the show. Whatever mode you pick, size it so a run of blanks doesn't end the session before the race does.
| Grid | 5x3, 10 fixed winlines |
| Qualify With | Any 3 scatters / Expanding Wilds |
| Wild Behaviour | Expands over the reel, no scatter substitution |
| Normal Spin RTP | 96.09% |
| XXXtreme / Super | 5x bet (96.00%) / 50x bet (96.03%) |
Top-Up Phase
How to Trigger
Optional. Offered after you qualify, while the table waits for the next live race to start.
What Happens
Press TOP UP and the game releases between three and six balloons, with a maximum of two in any single colour. Each balloon carries a value that is added to the finish-line multiplier for its colour. Because the release is capped at two per colour, a Top-Up can leave your four numbers badly lopsided — two yellows and nothing on red is a perfectly normal result. The minimum Top-Up stake matches your qualification base bet, and raising it raises the values that can appear on the balloons.
Multipliers
Top-Up values are added to the multiplier pool rather than multiplied into it. Evolution states the payout structure as scatter multipliers combined with the round bonus values, with Top-Up amounts added on top. The phase carries its own published return of 96.05%.
Variants
You can skip Top-Up entirely and play the race with whatever your scatters earned. You can also run it at the minimum, which still spreads a few values around without much extra outlay.
Strategy
Top-Up buys size, not odds. The balls are the same 80 either way, so paying in does nothing to your chance of a given colour winning — it only changes what that colour is worth if it does. Treat it as a second stake on the same round and count it in your session budget, because it's easy to spend more topping up than you spent qualifying.
| Balloons Released | 3 to 6 |
| Per Colour Cap | 2 |
| Minimum Stake | Equal to your qualification bet |
| Effect | Adds to a colour's finish-line multiplier |
| Published RTP | 96.05% |
Live Balloon Race
How to Trigger
Runs automatically once the studio round begins. Every qualified player at the table takes part in the same race.
What Happens
The host works a ball-drawing machine loaded with 80 balls: 20 yellow, 20 purple, 20 green and 20 red. Each ball drawn lifts the balloon of that colour one step. The first balloon to climb five steps crosses the finish line and ends the round. Because the machine is evenly loaded, no colour starts with an advantage — but the draw runs without replacement inside a round, so a colour that banks three early steps genuinely is closer to home, and the studio commentary tends to focus there.
Multipliers
You do not pick a colour, so there's no losing ticket. Whichever balloon wins, the multiplier you are holding for that colour is applied to your qualification bet. That number is your scatter multipliers combined with the round bonus values and any Top-Up you added for that colour.
Variants
One race format only. There are no side bets, no course variations, and no way to swap or trade colours once the round starts.
Strategy
The whole game is decided before the balls start moving. By race time the only variables left are which colour wins and how big your number on it happens to be — you can't influence either. If a round ends with your biggest multiplier stranded on a balloon that finished second, that is the game working as designed, not a near miss you can play around next time.
| Balls in Machine | 80 (20 per colour) |
| Colours | Yellow, purple, green, red |
| Steps to Win | 5 |
| Colours You Hold | All four |
| Paid On | Winning colour's multiplier × your bet |
What Each Mode Costs You
There is no bonus buy here. What Evolution sells instead is a faster qualifier, and it publishes a separate return figure for each option. Read the column on the right before you decide the wait is worth skipping.
| Mode | Cost | Published RTP | What It Guarantees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal Spin | Base bet | 96.09% | Nothing guaranteed — the standard reel set |
| XXXtreme Spin | 5x base bet | 96.00% | One scatter or Expanding Wild every spin |
| Super XXXtreme Spin | 50x base bet | 96.03% | Two special symbols every spin |
| Top-Up Phase | From your base bet | 96.05% | 3-6 balloons, max two per colour |
Figures published by Evolution Gaming for each mode. Operators do not run reduced-RTP builds of this table.
Watch a Round Before You Stake One
Free play walks you through the qualifier, the Top-Up window and a full race — no registration, no deposit.
Play Free Demo