Fire in the Hole Review: A 6×3 Mine That Opens to 46,656 Ways

Fire in the Hole starts small. You get a 6×3 mine with 64 ways, and the bottom three rows are blocked off. Every win and every explosion opens another row, until the grid reaches 6×6 and up to 46,656 ways. Nolimit City rates the game Extreme volatility, and our demo session showed what that means: lots of empty spins and a few small wins.

Key facts

• Provider: Nolimit City, released 2 March 2021
• Grid: 6 reels, 3 rows at the start, up to 6 rows
• Ways: 64 at the start, up to 46,656
• RTP: 96.06%
• Volatility: Extreme, as rated by Nolimit City
• Hit frequency: 25.98%, so about 1 spin in 4 pays something
• Max win: 60,000x the bet, with a stated chance of 1 in 2.4 million
• Free spins: about 1 in 200 spins, according to Nolimit City
• Bet range: 0.20 to 50
• Feature buy: yes, where the casino and local rules allow it

These figures come from Nolimit City’s game page. The results further down are only what happened in our demo.

To test: some casinos run a lower RTP version. Check the game info at your casino before you play with real money.

[IMAGE placeholder: base game with the grid opened to 5 or 6 rows and the ways counter visible]

What happens on a spin

• Collapsing Mine: winning symbols are removed and new ones drop in. Each collapse also unlocks one more row, up to 6.
• Wild Mining: on a spin with no win, 3, 4 or 5 matching symbols in a row can be cleared and replaced with up to 3 wilds.
• xBomb wilds: they act as wilds, then explode and destroy the symbols around them. Each explosion adds 1 to the multiplier for the next collapse, even if the xBomb was not part of a win.

The ways counter sits above the reels and changes as rows open, so you can see how close you are to the full 6×6 grid.

Lucky Wagon Spins

3, 4 or 5 bonus symbols start the free spins with 2, 3 or 4 extra rows already open. You get 3 spins, and the count goes back to 3 each time a new coin lands. A train row runs above the grid and shows an enhancer over each reel. When a coin lands under one, the enhancer applies. The enhancers are:

• coin values
• multipliers
• dynamite
• bags and chests
• the dwarf

Nolimit City says most of the 60,000x potential comes from this round. It did not trigger for us, so we can’t tell you how it plays.

To test: trigger Lucky Wagon Spins, or buy it in a demo, and note how often coins land under an enhancer.

Our demo session

We played Nolimit City’s free demo on 2 November 2026 at a 1.00 bet, across three short sessions. The demo page crashed early in the third, so the balance shows 23 paid spins in total, not 25.

• Only 4 of the 23 spins paid: 0.70, 0.40, 1.90 and 0.80.
• That is 3.80 back from 23.00 staked.
• The grid opened often. The ways counter passed 1,000 on several spins, reached 3,072 with a x3 multiplier once, and 10,000 with a x4 multiplier once.
• Even those big grids paid very little, because most collapses ran out before 3 matching symbols lined up across the reels.
• Lucky Wagon Spins never triggered.

We won less often than the 25.98% hit frequency suggests, but a short session can easily fall below the average. What matters is how the game works: most of the base game pays almost nothing, and the bonus round has to do the heavy lifting.

[IMAGE placeholder: an xBomb exploding with the multiplier shown above the reels, or the Lucky Wagon Spins train row if you trigger it]

Who should play it

• Good fit: players who like to watch the grid grow and can accept long runs of dead spins while waiting for the bonus.
• Poor fit: anyone with a small balance who wants regular small wins.

If you want ways slots that expand with less risk, try The Dog House Megaways, where the reel heights change on every spin instead of building up during a cascade. If you’re not sure what Extreme volatility means for your budget, our volatility guide explains it with examples.

Score: 6.4/10

The expanding mine is easy to follow and fun to watch. The base game is very harsh, though, and in our session the bonus never arrived to make up for it. Play it for the Lucky Wagon Spins and the 60,000x cap, and set your budget so you can wait 200 spins or more for the bonus.