About Hot Pepper
Hot Pepper was released on 8 December 2022. Pragmatic Play describes it as a cluster game played on a 7x7 grid, 49 positions, where at least five identical symbols touching horizontally or vertically form a win. There are no paylines.
Tumbles. Paid symbols are removed from play and new ones drop in to replace them, allowing further wins within the same spin. The feature is active on every spin, with no condition attached.
The wild left behind. This is the central mechanic: the official page states that every winning cluster leaves behind a random wild carrying a multiplier, in one of the tumbling positions. A chain of tumbles therefore does not merely produce successive wins, it seeds the grid with multiplier wilds that feed the wins that follow.
Five levels. A level-up feature increases the multiplier attached to those wilds. Hideous Slots details the trigger: every three wilds used in a win enables a level up, and a spin's starting level is drawn at random between 1 and 5.
The multiplier table. The value depends on both level and cluster size. At level 1, a cluster of 5 to 6 symbols is worth 1x, 7 to 8 is worth 2x, 9 to 10 is worth 4x, and 11 or more is worth 8x. Each level doubles the entire row: level 2 gives 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x, level 3 gives 4x, 8x, 16x and 32x, level 4 gives 8x, 16x, 32x and 64x, and level 5 gives 16x, 32x, 64x and 128x. Climbing from level 1 to level 5 therefore multiplies the value sixteenfold at equal cluster size.
Free spins. Three or more bonus symbols award 12 free spins, and three further bonus symbols during the feature add five more. The decisive point is that those 12 spins are played entirely at level 5: the random starting-level draw disappears, and 128x is available from the first spin onward.
RTP. The official page states 96.45%, meaning €3.55 kept by the house per €100 wagered. Hideous Slots reports a range from 95.02% to 96.45% depending on the version distributed; at the low setting the margin rises to €4.98 per €100 wagered. One point deserves flagging: the feature-buy version is quoted at 96.79%, above the base game. On most games, buying the bonus degrades the theoretical return; here, according to that source, it improves it by 0.34 points.
Bonus buy. It costs 100x the stake and guarantees the 12 free spins, so €20 at minimum stake and €10,000 at the top bet. The bought round therefore has to return more than 100x on average simply to repay its price. The option is banned in the United Kingdom, where the regulator treats feature buys as an accelerator of losses.
Bets and ceiling. From €0.20 to €100 a spin. Those 10,000x are worth €2,000 at minimum stake, €10,000 at €1 and €1,000,000 at €100. Across the 634 Pragmatic Play games catalogued in the BetsRank base, the median max win comes out at precisely 10,000x: this title sits exactly mid-catalogue on that measure, and distinguishes itself through its mechanic rather than its ceiling. Volatility is rated 5 out of 5, the top of the studio's scale.
