Buggin

Theme and Design

A Peaceful Slot With Happy Bugs and Laid-Back Vibes

Buggin is set in a well-kept country park or garden, with well-trimmed hedges, closely cut lawns, a band stand and spring flowers. It’s got a peaceful springtime feel to it, the polar opposite of the nightmare plant-based game, Florageddon, from the same studio. Even the bugs look friendly here, appearing next to various fruit symbols on a 7x7 grid, framed by wrought-iron. Overall, the atmosphere is very pleasant and suited to the mid-variance gameplay.

RTP and Variance

Buggin has a fixed RTP of 94%. That is below the average for an online slot but is standard for ELK who just role that way. It may seem a little tight, but consider that these days many of your favourite slots studios produce their games with multiple settings, and whilst the optimum levels are always good, in some cases they can drop as low as 88% at the bottom end.

Buggin comes in at a medium variance so the win distribution will be more even than other games from the same provider, and with a 35% hit rate (a win on every 1.35 spins on average) the game will produce quite frequent payouts.

Maximum Win

The max win in Buggin is 10,000x. That feels good for a medium variance game. It matches the top payout found in games like Toro 7s and Fate of Fortune by the same provider, both of which are more volatile plays.

Symbols and Paytable

As standard for Cluster Pays slots, Buggin plays on a 7x7 grid. You’ll need to match up 5 or more identical symbols touching in horizontally or vertically adjacent positions to trigger a win. The maximum payouts are for 12 or more of each symbol in a cluster.

Low payers are the the mushroom, blueberry, raspberry and grape. These don’t have great value, maxing out at just 3x for 12 or more mushrooms in a cluster. The premiums are the four bugs in green, blue, pink and red. They are valued at from 0.3x for 5 greens in a cluster right up to 100x for 12 or more reds.

There are also lots of wild variations to look out for in this game, as I will explain.

NOTE: In Buggin, all pay symbols can also come in a 2x2 or 3x3 size. When they do, they pay out the equivalent 4x or 6x the value of the pay symbol they represent.

Features and Gameplay

Cascading Wins and Wild Multipliers 

Buggin uses a Cascading Wins mechanic, like many cluster pays slots, whilst utilising wilds in a unique way too, which can help build big wins.

Firstly, after any win, winning pay symbols from each cluster are removed and new ones drop in to replace them, potentially creating more wins.

But where wilds are part of a cluster, they are NOT removed from the grid. And if a cluster contained no wilds, then one is added in one of the spaces created in the cascade, and it carries a 1x multiplier.

And, if your winning cluster contained more than one wild, then they all merge together when the cascade takes place, and their multiplier values (if they have them) are added together. This feature is more powerful if your wild is part of more than one cluster as it will merge more than once, taking its multiplier value with it each time.

Where more than one multiplier is part of a winning cluster then their values are added together before being applied to the win amount.

Earn Feature Wilds With Modifiers Through The Progress Bar

Other key components of this game are the Feature Wilds. They work like this …

During every sequence of wins and cascades, all winning symbols contribute to a progress bar that sits atop the reels. When you fill the bar completely, then a Feature Wild is displayed above the bar. There is room for FIVE Feature Wilds here and they only come into play when your sequence of cascades ends – i.e. when there are no more wins. At this point they are released onto random positions across the grid.

Each Feature Wild has a modifier that it will activate IF it forms part of a winning cluster when it is lands on the grid. The modifiers are these:

• Big Wild – this one will expand one pay symbol into a 2x2 or 3x3 version
• Multiplying Wild – its multiplier value is added to any wild symbols on the grid that are not part of a winning cluster
• Random Wild – will replace between 2 and 4 standard pay symbols with wilds
• Removing Wild – triggers the removal of all of the lowest paying symbols from the grid
• Upgrading Wild – will upgrade every instance of one pay symbol on the grid to a higher value symbol

Wild Re-Drops

Another way to add Feature Wilds to the grid is through the Re-Drops. When you play you will notice that some of the wild positions displayed above the progress bar are padlocked. If you collect enough Feature Wilds to reach the padlocked position, then a Wild Re-Drop is triggered with additional Feature Wilds added to the grid when the spin ends.

Free Drops With Sticky Wilds

Free spins are named as Free Drops in ELK games. You’ll need to land at least 3 scatters on one spin to trigger these, and you’ll get 7 to start. There are also super scatter symbols, and if one of these is part of the 3 that triggered the round, then you’ll get 7 Super Free Drops instead.

The Free Drops round is super-charged and gives you the best chance of hitting the 10,000x max win. The following enhancements to the gameplay are active:

• All regular wilds are sticky throughout the round in free drops AND super free drops – a powerful tool to build bigger wild multipliers
• In super free drops, ALL of the Feature Wild positions above the reels are locked. And once unlocked, they are released onto the grid at the start of each free drop
• Landing 3 more scatters in either round gets you 3 more free drops, or if one is a super scatter, 3 more super free drops.