Always Up!

Always Up! is a Chinese New Year slot from BGaming, released on 30 September 2025. It plays on a 3x3 grid with 5 lines, returns 95.07% at medium volatility – and carries a maximum win of 559x the bet, which is among the lowest ceilings we have ever recorded.

Fireworks On A Terrace

The reels sit under the green-tiled roof of a pavilion, red lacquered columns either side, with a lake and blue hills behind and fireworks bursting in the sky. A white dragon in a red robe stands to the left of the frame holding a lit firecracker.

The symbols are New Year tokens: a lucky bag, a bundle of banknotes, a gold coin, the character 福, a gold ingot, and a rack of fireworks marked BONUS. The words 5 LINES run vertically down the right edge of the frame.

A 559x Ceiling Is The Headline

Most slots advertise four or five figures. This one publishes 559x – a precise, computed number rather than a rounded marketing figure, and small enough to change how you should think about the whole game.

Two consequences follow. A 559x maximum means the game cannot produce the kind of result people tell stories about; but it also means the return is spread across ordinary spins rather than hoarded for one that almost never comes. Paired with a medium volatility rating, that is a coherent design.

What sits oddly against it is the return itself. At 95.07% this is one of the lower figures in BGaming’s catalogue – the studio’s Fiesta Clusters returns 97.5% and Burning Chilli 243 97% – and a low ceiling usually buys a higher return, not a lower one. Here you get neither the big number nor the generous percentage.

Nine Positions, Five Lines

Three reels of three is nine positions, and five lines across them means the three rows and the two diagonals. The vertical columns are not live.

On a board this small, position matters more than usual: a symbol in the centre square sits on four of the five lines at once, a corner on two, and the middle of an edge on just one. Our best recorded spin read “Line 5 pays” under the grid and returned 40.00 against a 10.00 total bet – 4x, from a diagonal of banknote bundles through the middle.

The Bonus Is A Firework Rack

Three of the firework symbols trigger the round, and our screenshot caught exactly that – three BONUS racks lit across the board with rockets streaking up the screen behind them.

What follows is not a free-spins counter. The reels are replaced by a wooden rack holding five firework rockets on a terrace above the lake, with CLICK TO START written above them and a large red START button to the right. One rocket was already lit and burning when we reached this screen.

It is a launch-and-reveal minigame rather than a spin round, and on a game with a 559x ceiling it is where most of the upside has to live.

The Buy Costs A Seventh Of The Maximum

A red BUY BONUS button sits in the top-right corner priced at 800.00 FUN. Against our 10.00 total bet that is 80x.

Now hold that beside the ceiling. The most this game can pay is 559x, and the ticket to its feature costs 80x – more than a seventh of the maximum. Put another way, a bought round has to reach roughly a seventh of the best possible outcome simply to break even.

That is a far harsher ratio than we usually see. Games with four-figure ceilings routinely charge 60x to 100x for a buy, where the same price is a fortieth or a hundredth of what is available. Here the arithmetic is unforgiving, and it is the single most important thing to understand before pressing that button.

What The Session Did

Our balance ran from 780.00 down to 460.00 across the screenshots, at a 10.00 stake. The 40.00 line win was the largest single result we recorded – four times the bet, on a game whose absolute ceiling is 559 times it.

That is the honest texture of Always Up!: a small board, five short lines, and results in the low single-digit multiples between features.

What The Bet Changes

Everything scales with the stake, the purchase included. Our screenshots were taken at 10.00, where the buy costs 800. At a tenth of that stake it costs 80; the multiples – 80x for the buy, 559x as the ceiling – never move.

More From BGaming

BGaming’s catalogue is wide and the returns vary a great deal across it. Burning Chilli 243 pairs a 97% return with a 500x ceiling at low volatility – a very close comparison to this game, and a more generous one. Fiesta Clusters returns 97.5%, and Clucking Hell goes the other way with cell multipliers to x256.

Who It Is For

Always Up! is for players who want something small, bright and quick. The pavilion artwork is attractive, the dragon mascot is good company, and the firework-rack bonus is a genuine minigame rather than another spin counter. Nine positions and five lines make it as simple as a slot gets.

The reservations are real, though. A 95.07% return is on the low side for BGaming, a 559x ceiling means nothing dramatic is ever going to happen, and an 80x buy on a game capped at 559x is the least favourable price-to-ceiling ratio in this batch. If you like the look of it, play it at a small stake for the artwork and treat the buy button with caution. All six casinos we checked carry it.

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