5 Families Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

5 Families Review

If you’ve ever fantasized about being a gangster - a made man that gets to sit in the VIP room with a striped suit and expensive cigars - well, then you have the chance of a lifetime with 5 Families slot from Red Tiger. The leader of the gang seems to be the Al Capone lookalike with his white hat, slick smile and notorious cigar smoking. The other 4 “godfathers” might be inspired by some movie, but they're harder to get a grasp on. Anyway, there is only one feature in this game, and the volatility is more brutal than most other medium variance games we’ve tried.

Perhaps this is due to the mafia theme, we do not know, but our 200 spins test session gave us the impression that it’s very hard to get anywhere with these hard-nosed crooks. Visually, the game is quite pleasing, and the gloomy atmosphere combines well with the metallic clicks from the revolver drum that accompanies each spin. Getting locked and loaded is what it’s all about here, as you need to fill the 5-shooter above the reels with bullets to be granted access to the all-important VIP Room bonus feature.

The game plays out on 5 reels, 3 rows and 10 fixed ways to win, and you can place bets between 10p and $500 per spin across all platforms and devices. The mafia theme is always fascinating, but we can’t help to feel that Red Tiger could have put a lot more into this game. The math model seems a bit out of whack, and there are just not enough features to make things go around here. It’s sad to see something with such potential be wasted like a street level thug, as Red Tiger could have easily made this into a pretty solid game by spicing it up a bit.

What are the bonus features?

There is not all that much to write about in terms of bonus features, as this game comes surprisingly “unarmed” to the party. There is not even a regular wild symbol to benefit from here, and as for scatters and bonus rounds - “fuhgeddaboudit”. In fact, there is only one bonus feature in the whole game outside of the jackpot feature, and this is the VIP Room feature.

Above the reels you’ll see a revolver with 5 empty bullet chambers - a five-shooter in other words. Each winning combination you land is marked by bullets, and you fill one bullet chamber every time you win.

When you fill the gun with 5 bullets, you are finally permitted entry into the VIP Room bonus feature. All the symbols are now worth 5 times as much as in the base game, and you’ll use up 1 of the 5 bullets you have per spin. The good news is that the bullet count resets to 5 again when you land a winning combo, which means you need to land 5 non-winning spins in a row to exit the feature.

You thus exit the bonus feature the exact opposite way that you entered it, which is a nice and balanced touch. The Al Capone looking leader of the 5 families is the highest paying symbol, and he will now pay 100x your stake for 5 on a payline, as opposed to only 20x in the base game.

Jackpot game

You need to land at least 3 jackpot symbols on the same spin to trigger the 5 Families jackpot feature. You will then spin a Wheel of Fortune that determines which of the 3 jackpots you get. The number and size of the different jackpot segments on the wheel does not correlate to the actual odds for winning each jackpot.

The chance of winning the jackpots will increase somewhat with the size of your bet level, and here are the 3 jackpots that are up for grabs in this game:

• Daily Drop Jackpot - seeds at €1,000 and is won within a given time every day.
• Must Drop Jackpot - seeds at €100 and must be won before it reaches €1,000.
• Mega Drop Jackpot - seeds at €20,000 and will increase with no upper limit until it’s won.

You will not find any kind of free spins or bonus round in this game, as it’s really all about the VIP Room 5x multiplier feature. This is the only feature in the game, which is a somewhat unusual and daring choice in a competitive market.

Clearly, a lot of players will be turned off by the lack of a proper bonus round, and the VIP Room feature could have been better if the 5 spins you get were actually free. Having players pay for those spins just feels cheap, and makes the feature less attractive than it could have been.

How to play

The game interface from Red Tiger is easy to overview, and you’ll find the 3 jackpots mentioned above on the left-hand side.

Setting your stake is done via the “stake” icon down in the left-hand side corner, and you can choose from a bet range between 10p and £500 per spin. This gives you a lot of flexibility, and it should satisfy most player types out there. If you don’t want to see the jackpots all the time, you can click the arrow icon up in the right-hand side corner, as this removes the jackpots from view.

Up there you can also toggle on/off the game sound, and click the hamburger menu to be taken into the game’s paytable. Before you get to the actual paytable however, you need to scroll through a few screens describing the VIP Room bonus feature.

Both paytables are static, which means that they do not upgrade to reflect your chosen bet level. This also means that you need to divide the symbol values by the number of fixed paylines (that would be 10 in this case) in order to find out how much each symbol combination pays per total stake.

Finally, you can switch on the Turbo spins via the golden double arrow button next to the spin button, and set up the autoplay feature with 20, 50 or 100 autospins. You are also required to set a loss limit between £10 and £10,000 here, and you can also choose to set a win limit and make the autoplay feature stop when you trigger the bonus feature.

Where to play 5 Families?

If you bothered to read the above, you are now well-versed in how to play this game. In this section of the review, we will discuss some options you have when it comes to where you can play 5 Families slot. What you need to consider at this time, is whether or not you want to try out the free demo version of the game first, or if you’d rather just get right into the real money action immediately.

This game is released exclusively at Casumo at the time of writing, and we are not quite sure if or when the wide release will be. Don’t worry though, as we scan the whole casino market on a regular basis to keep our information up to date. You will always find the casinos that carry this game at the top of this page.

We usually recommend that people play the free demo game first, before making a final decision to play for real money. The reason for this is quite simple. You have nothing to lose from testing the game risk free, and it will also give you some experience with the flow of the gameplay. There is no point in wasting time and money on a game you don’t like after all, which is why we have the demo game installed right here on this page for you. Follow the link to the top, and play 5 Families for free immediately.

The 200 Spins 5 Families Experience

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a good mafia themed game, and we had our hopes up based mostly on the audiovisual presentation of this game. However, the sole bonus feature puzzled us, as we had a hard time understanding what Red Tiger was thinking here. Still, we gave it our best shot with an open mind, as we loaded in our first 100 turbo charged spins.

The game is supposed to be of medium volatility, but it felt as brutal as a mafia hit job to us. The pace of the game is pretty good with the turbo switched on though, and the clicks from the spinning revolver that accompanies every spin gives 5 Families slot that “oddly satisfying” quality that some games have.

On the other hand, this is the only quality that saves the base game from being a total bore, and it’s hardly enough in the long run. We had mostly dead spins, minute wins and a few “bigger” wins in our 200 spins test run, and we only managed to gain access to the precious VIP Room once. Our biggest base game win was a measly 12x dud, and the base game potential of 200x is almost a joke for this kind of volatility.

Filling those 5 bullets into the cylinder chambers is a frustrating task indeed, and you’ll keep getting close but failing at it again and again. We only managed to get 5 consecutive wins around 180 spins into our session, and we really hoped this would open up the game and let it shine. Instead, the feature gave us mostly dead spins, and we got to reset it only once with a measly 6x win. This became our total win from the whole thing, and we felt like a beat-up and robbed mafia victim being left for dead in a back alley.

Review Summary

With such a solid visual presentation and interesting theme, it’s sad to see Red Tiger waste this opportunity to really make something noteable with 5 Families slot. A high risk/reward math model would have been a lot more suitable, because as it stands now, it feels more like a high risk and low rewards kind of game.

Perhaps “5 Bullets” would have been a better title, as you will really get obsessed with filling those empty chambers. The VIP Room feature lifts the potential to an almost acceptable level of 1,000x, but it’s hardly enough to save the day here. Especially not since bigger wins are far from guaranteed even when you finally do manage to trigger this half-baked “bonus round”. The whole thing feels like an overpriced drink at a mafia run strip club with nothing to show for it.

Pros

• VIP Room feature with 5x multiplier
• Solid audiovisual presentation
• 3 different progressive jackpots

Cons

• Base game max win is only 200x
• Bonus feature max win is only 1,000x
• Hard to trigger the VIP Room feature

If you enjoy 5 Families you should also try:

As you probably understood from the above conclusion, we are not the biggest fans of this game. Luckily, there are plenty of gangster and mafia slots out there that are far better than what Red Tiger has coughed up here. Below, we will recommend some of the best gangster slots out there for you, and you can find out more about them by following the respective links.

Cash Noire - is the perfect game for any film noir buffs out there, and it comes with the hard-boiled feel of a 1940’s black and white whodunnit thriller. It’s not exactly a mafia game perhaps, but it’s about solving a murder mystery involving a femme fatale. There is a “crime zone” jumping around on each spin, and this hotspot will increase in size as you climb the “clue bonus-meter” to trigger the bonus round.

Kings of Chicago - is a very unique hybrid game from NetEnt, as it combines poker and video slot play in a very fun way. The symbols are a full deck of cards here, and you win by landing classic poker hands. The volatility is high, but you can also win up to 13,000x in this high-stake gangster poker game released all the way back in mid 2011.

Scarface - is a branded effort from NetEnt. It’s based on the legendary gangster movie starring Al Pacino, and his unforgettable portrait of the rise and fall of Tony Montana. This is a feature rich game for sure, and although it’s a bit dated, it’s still a good play to this day. You can look forward to nudge spins, free spins and a bonus game here, and the latter allows you to take the final stand against the wave of hit men with a coked-up Montana and his “little friend”.

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