After a Time Rift joins a winning line in Alice: Time Rift, what happens before the win is paid?
The reels respin first. The Time Rift and the winning symbols lock while everything else spins again; a new Time Rift, or a line that appears or grows, locks too and earns another respin, and a respin that adds neither ends the feature and pays the lot. In our 750 paid spins at €1.00 that happened on 22 spins, with up to 6 respins each. The 20 that did not also open the Bonus Game paid €190.00, including all 8 base-game spins that reached 10x.
Wonderland gone wrong, on 5x3 reels
This Wonderland has fallen apart. Thunderkick's game page places it in "a brutal, half-shattered Undercity" and casts the White Rabbit as a crime boss with a time device, while Alice teams up with the Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat to stop him. On screen that becomes five reels of three rows and 10 fixed paylines, paid from the leftmost reel.
Alice herself is the top symbol: 50.00 for five on a line at our €1.00 stake, 15.00 for four and 5.00 for three. A red-haired woman follows at 15.00, 6.00 and 2.50, and there the rules capture stops. The server's answers fill in the rest. A man in a green-lit top hat pays up to 12.50, a grinning figure with blue hair up to 10.00, A and K up to 3.00, and Q, J and 10 up to 2.50. We read the three portraits after Alice as the Queen, the Hatter and the Cat; the rules pages we captured do not name them.
Above them all sits the Time Rift, a pocket watch with a rabbit-eared skull for a face. The rules make it both Wild and Scatter: it stands in for regular symbols on a line, three or more anywhere start the Bonus Game, and inside a line win it sets off Sticky Respins. One was showing on the first screen of 135 of our 750 paid spins.
Lock, respin, repeat: how a Time Rift stretches one spin
When a Time Rift sits in a line win, the server's first answer pays nothing; the whole amount arrives with the last respin. The 20 sequences that did not lead into free spins came about once in 38 paid spins; a single respin ended 8 of them, and the longest, on spin 675, ran to 6 respins for €22.50.
Spin 628 was the best of the base game. Four top hats and a Time Rift filled the top row, the first respin added a second five-symbol line and a three-symbol one, the second added nothing, and the screen paid 27x.
A Time Rift outside a line win starts nothing in the base game unless two more join it.
The Scatter count decides which symbol may grow
On its game page Thunderkick calls the round the Bonus Game and says only that a randomly selected symbol expands across the reels. The rules screen is more precise: three Scatters give 8 free spins, four give 10 and five give 12, retriggers add the same, and one symbol becomes the Selected Symbol. Three Scatters allow any symbol, four only a character, five always Alice.
At the end of each free spin, every reel that holds the Selected Symbol fills with it, and an Expanding win is paid once three or more reels carry it, even with an empty reel between them, Time Rifts counting as the symbol. In the answers an Expanding win paid the symbol's line value on all 10 paylines at once. Sticky Respins still run inside the round, and the free spin counter waits while they play.
The rules sentence on doubled reels is cut off in our capture; the server's answers fill it in. A reel holding two Selected Symbols, Time Rifts included, carried x2, one holding three carried x3, and several such reels were added together rather than multiplied. On free spin 4 of the round from spin 666, reels 2 and 4 held two As each and reel 1 an A and a Time Rift: x2 + x2 + x2 made x6, the Expanding win paid €30.00 and the spin €35.00.
Respins outearned the Bonus Game across our 750 spins
The demo server took €750.00 from our 750 paid spins at €1.00 each and gave back €533.50, 71.1% against a listed 94.10%. One session this size cannot test the long-run figure.
- 750paid spins at €1.00 in the demo
- 71.1%of the stakes paid back
- 73xbest round, free spins included
- 6free spins rounds triggered
Wins of any size came on 22.7% of spins, the median win was 0.5x, and no dry spell lasted longer than 22 spins. The 20 respin sequences that led to no free spins returned €190.00, the 6 Bonus Games €167.00 over 50 free spins, and everything else €176.50 between them.
The line never climbed back to its start: from €4,999.00 after spin 1 it sank to €4,769.50 on spin 627, just before the 27x respin, and finished at €4,783.50.
The six rounds drew a 10, an A, a 10, a K, an A and, in the round with four Scatters, the blue-haired figure. Our best, from spin 145, had the 10, one of the cheapest symbols, and still made 73x: its 10s reached three or four reels on four of the eight free spins, twice with doubled reels, for x2 and then x4. The round from spin 666 made 52x with the x6 spin above.
The buy menu priced in Time Rift symbols
Three cards sit behind the BUY FEATURE button; the two we could read in full are both called Bonus Game. The demo server prices them at 100x, 200x and 500x the stake and rates them at 94.30%, 94.40% and 94.50%, against 94.10% for spinning. The buy is absent from Thunderkick's game page.
The card pictures match the Scatter table, though no screen we captured says so. We bought only the cheapest, at €100.00: twice as control purchases, then once on film. The control rounds gave 8 free spins each, as three Scatters would, with a 10 and then a K as the Selected Symbol, and returned €157.00 and €79.50.
The first owed four fifths of its return to one spin. Its seventh free spin went through four respins until 10s or Time Rifts stood on all five reels, two on reel 3 and three on reel 4, so x2 + x3 gave x5 and the Expanding win paid €125.00.
That round, from a separate session at the same stake, shows the other end of the range: one Expanding win and seven free spins that paid nothing. The three purchases returned €245.00 for €300.00.
| Option | Price | At €1.00 | RTP of the buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bonus Game, 3 Scatters | 100x | €100.00 | 94.30% |
| Bonus Game, 4 Scatters | 200x | €200.00 | 94.40% |
| Bonus Game, 5 Scatters | 500x | €500.00 | 94.50% |
These percentages, like the 94.10% on the game page and in the rules, belong to the version the demo runs; a casino may run another, and some markets switch the buy off.
Three older Thunderkick slots with a piece of the same idea
The closest trigger belongs to Kraken's Lair, from February 2020: its emblem is wild and scatter too, but a winning line that includes it makes the line's symbols expand over their reels, where here the line locks and respins.
For the free spins, look at Sword of Khans, first released in 2019. Its Sword is scatter and wild on 10 paylines, and its Bonus Game also picks a random symbol to expand, but draws the number of spins at random and adds a multiplier up to x3 when a pick repeats. Here the Scatter count fixes both the spins and the pool of symbols.
Sticky respins are older too: Midas Golden Touch locks winning symbols for respins, but only inside its bonus, where any win starts them.
So who is Alice: Time Rift for? In our log the respin sequences, not the free spins, carried the session, arriving every few dozen spins between long runs of small line wins. Six Bonus Games in 750 spins is a thin supply for anyone who plays for the bonus, and the listed 94.10% is below that of 23 other games on this site.
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Our frames, the rules and the server's replies supply these answers.
Which comes first when the Scatters land inside a winning line, the respins or the free spins?
The respins. On spins 329 and 701 of our log the Time Rifts for the Bonus Game were already on the first screen, one of them inside a line win; the respin paid €2.00 and €1.50, and only then did 8 and 10 free spins begin.
Does the Selected Symbol stay the same for the whole round?
In everything we logged, yes: all six natural rounds and all three purchases kept one symbol from the first free spin to the last. None of them retriggered, so we cannot tell whether a retrigger draws a new symbol.
Can Time Rifts help the Selected Symbol reach three reels?
Yes: the rules let a Time Rift stand in for the Selected Symbol. In our second purchase, Time Rifts on reels 1 and 2 and Ks on reels 3 to 5 made a five-reel Expanding win of Ks, doubled by two Ks on reel 3, worth €60.00 at €1.00.
Is a character a better Selected Symbol than a card royal?
On paper, yes: the blue-haired figure pays up to 10.00 a line at €1.00, a 10 only 2.50. Our one character round, the 10-spin round from spin 701, never got its figure onto three reels and its free spins paid nothing, while a 10 gave our best round, 73x.
What does the BET+ switch above the spin button do?
The intro screen pairs BET+ with five Time Rifts and the words Enhanced Gameplay; the demo server lists two such modes, at 1.5x and 2.5x the stake, unexplained in the rules pages we captured. It was off on every frame, and each logged spin cost exactly €1.00.