Fortress Charge: Overview

Crazy by name and just as wild in execution. Whenever Reno-based developer Crazy Tooth Studio drops a new slot, it’s hard not to wonder what on earth they’ll come up with next. While some studios talk about originality and then churn out the same old fruit games in new palettes, Crazy Tooth tends to deliver something genuinely odd almost every time. Anyone who enjoys unconventional slots should be happy to hear Fortress Charge is yet another strange, one-of-a-kind brain-teaser from the bold team. It’ll probably still sound confusing on paper, but we’ll try to explain it as cleanly as possible.

Taking place in a fantasy setting, Fortress Charge uses a 6 reel, 3 row layout built around a three-tier, castle-like structure. Visually, it feels closer to a side-scrolling video game than a traditional slot, and it doesn’t take long to suspect the developers drew inspiration from Big Time Gaming’s Holy Diver slot. Either way, once it’s spinning, the game leans fully into its fantasy-adventure vibe with castles, quests, monsters, combat, and magic.

Joining the adventure costs 10 p/c at the low end and up to $/€15 at the top. When you spin, one or more heroes can land on the leftmost reel, while 3 fortresses with different prizes show up on the rightmost reel. That may not click just yet, but we’ll break it down shortly.

First up are the symbols you’ll see. There are five heroes – a beast, a dragon, an elf, a dwarf, and a knight. Every space between the hero reel and the fortress reel can be empty or occupied by a villain, an accessory, a multiplier, or a chest. Villains include ogres, scorpions, spikes, boulders, and snakes. Accessories consist of potions, spears, wooden shields, metal shields, and magic wands.

When one or more heroes land on the first reel, they advance one position to the right. If a hero runs into a villain, they might defeat it, although sometimes they won’t. Landing on an accessory means it’s collected and can later be used to beat certain villains. Chests open to reveal instant wins, and multipliers are gathered and applied to the total payout for that spin.

If heroes win a fight or pick something up, they step another space to the right and keep progressing until they’re defeated or they reach the fortress, where the final prize is paid out along with any wins earned along the route. Villains pay from 0.75x to 1.35x, multiplied by the reel number they appear on. Chests award 4.5x to 15x, and fortresses can pay 15x – 1,500x the stake. Multipliers appear in x2 size only, and up to 4 can be collected to reach x16 in total.

It’s mildly funny to wade through the multi-page paytable rules and then find out there are only 3 paylines in play. Other key stats include an RTP of 96.45% and a fairly low hit rate of 12.32%. Put simply, you shouldn’t expect a hero to land every spin, or to win most encounters when they do. That combination makes it a very highly volatile slot, though it can still produce big results if the heroes manage to push through.

Fortress Charge: Features

Since there are no wilds or free spins, there aren’t really extra “features” to list in the usual sense. Instead, here are a few more rules that should help either sharpen the picture—or make it even weirder.

Heroes have specific matchups: the beast defeats the ogre, the dragon defeats the ogre and the spikes, the elf defeats the scorpion, the dwarf defeats the boulder, and the knight defeats the scorpion as well as the snake. As noted earlier, accessories support the heroes: the potion can be used against the boulder, the spear against the ogre, the wooden shield against the scorpion, the shiny shield against the scorpion and the snake.

Finally, the wand can defeat any of the villains, which is very useful. In addition, fireballs may sometimes fall from above and remove any obstacle blocking a hero’s progress. Multiple fireballs can land during the same spin.

Fortress Charge: Verdict

All perfectly clear now, yes? Maybe not on the page, but once you see it running, it’s actually quite straightforward. In short: first you need a hero to land, then you want them to beat whatever’s in front of them (with or without accessories), and ideally reach the end of the row to claim the fortress prize. If that concept appeals, you’ll likely have a great time with Fortress Charge. If it doesn’t, it’s still worth noting this is anything but a standard slot. In that sense, it’s another signature Crazy Tooth ‘slot’ that stretches the format and isn’t afraid to stand apart.

The potential payouts may also persuade anyone sitting on the fence to try Fortress Charge. If your hero makes it from one side of the grid to the other, the rewards can be strong. The dream outcome is hitting the 1,500x fortress with a multiplier or two collected along the way. The developer says wins of up to 16,000 times your stake are possible, though that’s the absolute maximum observed across billions of test spins. Even so, the upside here is clearly significant.

Just remember that Fortress Charge is highly volatile, so when heroes aren’t successfully raiding fortresses, the game can feel quiet. You may run into stretches of dead spins, or see heroes repeatedly get knocked out on the first step, which can be irritating—but that’s simply how this one plays.

Fortress Charge is another Crazy Tooth release that’s so far off the beaten track you really need to play it yourself to understand the feel. You may end up loving it or hating it, but it’s hard to argue it isn’t different if you’re looking for something fresh.