Flying Horse Pokies
Flying Horse is one of the cornerstones of the Ainsworth pokie range and has been around at bricks and mortar casinos for a number of years. It may have some slightly dated symbols, but the crowds seem to love it, mainly because there’s some interesting bonus features that can make playing it a pretty rewarding experience.
Having horses fly around the reels might be a little distracting, so despite the title, there’s just a single image of a horse floating through clouds, or maybe smoke, and the rest of the symbols are a somewhat random mix of Western landscapes, wildlife and traditional Poker symbols.
They all spin around 5 reels and are laid out over 3 rows. With 100 paylines running across the game, it’s comparatively easy to land winning combinations, which happens whenever 3 or more examples of matching symbols land across an active line of sequential reels running left to right.
There’s a couple of exceptions to this rule, but we will come to them in a bit, right now let’s have a look at what symbols players can expect to see and how it all comes together.
Playing Flying Horse
Like most pokies from Ainsworth, Flying Horse uses the high card symbols 9, 10, J, Q, K and A to make up the lower value wins, although rather than increasing in value from 9 to A they are all worth the same amount. Landing 3 matching cards is worth 2x the amount staked on a single line, while 3 pays out 3x and a full line is worth just 5x, amounts which are exceptionally low for this type of game.
Luckily the higher value symbols are there to help make up for any deficit, with the canyon paying up to 8x the line bet, and the diamond, rearing horse and red 7 all being worth between 2x and 10x.
A rather vicious-looking bald eagle is the most valuable of the standard symbols, and when this swoops onto the reels, it will pay 3x, 8x or 25x for lines of 3, 4 or 5 respectively.
Flying Horse
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Bonus Features
There’s several bonus symbols and features that make playing Flying Horse more interesting than just lining up matching images.
A wild symbol will pay out some of the biggest prizes and also substitute for others when it can complete a winning line, while there’s also a wild Flying Horse symbol that doubles up as a scatter, which is a bit strange, but helps with some of the bonus rounds, so we won’t grumble about it.
Players will notice that some positions on reels 2 and 4 are surrounded in blue or red, and when the main image of the horse appears in a blue-edge spot, the whole of the reel will turn wild and it’s even possible to get both wild at once.
The red-edged positions are potentially even more rewarding, as the horse landing on reel 2 will turn all of reels 1, 2 and 3 wild, guaranteeing multiple wins in a single spin. If it lands in a red position on reel 4, it turns reels 3, 4 and 5 into wilds, and anyone fortunate enough to see the horse stopping in red-edged positions on reels 2 and 4 at once will see the entire game turn wild, which will complete 100 lines all in a single go.
A free spins game can be triggered by the horse and wild horse scatter, with players awarded 8 spins, during which the playing card symbols are removed from the mix, and the whole game expands to play out on reels 9 symbols high.
When the horse appears in a red position on reel 2 during these games, players get a free re-spin with all of the giant reels 1, 2 and 3 wild, and if it appears on the fourth reel, then it’s the turn of reels 3, 4 and 5 to go fully wild for a single re-spin.
Unfortunately, there’s no feature when all positions go wild when it stops on reels 2 and 4 at once, but at least the free spins can be extended by any 3 or more scatters appearing again, with an extra 5 spins added on to the end of the current round.
The Verdict
Visually, Flying Horse is a bit of a mess, with seemingly random symbols thrown onto the reels and not much of a coherent theme. But that clearly hasn’t put off the many loyal fans of this pokie, which is surely down to the extra rewards that it can bring them.
These bonuses are all quite unusual, so it may not be a game for new players, but anyone who likes exciting features will surely fly to these reels whenever possible.