Eager Beavers

Theme and Design

This slot feels really cohesive. The expanding and contracting grid works perfectly. with the dam-making instincts that beavers have. The golden stone and the dark green fir trees make you feel as though you’re in the American wilderness. The animations are fun but not intrusive. It all works seamlessly together.

Real Time Gaming and ELK Studios have already made their take on the beaver theme, with Builder Beavers and Dam Beavers respectively and this one definitely shares some of the feel of Builder Beavers. However, it still manages to feel like its own game.

RTP and Variance

With an RTP of 94.29% this isn’t a slot that can score all that highly in terms of RTP. This combined with high volatility means that Eager Beavers will be leaving any beavers with a smaller bankroll a little less than eager. 

Maximum Win

The top payout of 10,000x your stake is a large enough carrot to attract most players, even with the ‘unfriendly’ RTP. Sure, there are a handful of other games that promise bigger top prizes, but beyond sticking a progressive jackpot on it, this max win is pretty excellent.

Symbols and Paytable

Played on a 6-reel grid that dynamically adjusts to display 2 to 5 symbols per reel, this slot starts with between 64 and 7,776 ways to win, potentially expanding to an impressive 1,000,000 ways when all reels reach full height. Wins are formed by landing 3 or more matching symbols in adjacent positions from left to right, with no gaps in between.

The game features 14 pay symbols in total, along with Wild and Scatter symbols. The low value symbols are J, Q, K, A, and four fruits. 6 of a kind pays between 0.4x and 0.5x the bet. The premium symbols consist of various beavers in different colours: purple, green, orange, and red. 6 of a kind pays between 1x and 5x the bet. 

Wild symbols can substitute for any regular pay symbol and, if you land 6 of them, they award 5x the bet. Scatter symbols, represented by gold nuggets, trigger special features that we’ll come onto next.

Features and Gameplay

Eager Beavers has a bunch of great mechanics, mostly revolving around different special wilds. Let’s take a look at how all of the features work.

Wild Symbols

Wild symbols can substitute for all other symbols except scatters and special wilds. This enables you to make more wins. 

Cascades

Every time you make a win the symbols involved in the win are removed and then new symbols drop into the empty spaces from above. Every time a win is made from a cascade, an extra symbol appears at the top of each reel that was part of the winning combo. The cascades continue until no new wins are made, while the reels continue expanding until no new wins are made or they reach a maximum height of 10 rows.

Special Wild Features

There are two different special wild features in the game and whenever one of them is part of a winning way its feature triggers. Special wild features don’t have an effect on scatters, wilds, or other special wilds. The following are the special wilds:

• Wild Splash (fish): picks a random symbol on the reels and transforms all of that symbol into wilds.
• Wild Fall (log): causes a random number of wilds to land on the reels. They can be single or stacked.

Wild Rapids

Another fun feature that’s packed with wilds is Wild Rapids. This can occur randomly, when it does, placing a random number of wilds at the top of at least one reel. 

Cash Bonus Game

If you land three scatter symbols - the one with BONUS written across it - then this triggers the cash bonus game. Ordinary reels are replaced by special reels that can only land special symbols. The special symbols work as follows:

• Cash Values: these are worth 1x the bet up to 100x the bet.
• Collect: these collect all cash values on the current reel and then removes them.
• Super Collect: these collect all cash symbols from all reels and then removes them.
• Upgrade: these multiply all cash values on the current reel by x2, x3, x4, or x5.
• Super Upgrade: these multiply all cash values on all reels by x2, x3, x4, or x5.
• Build: these increase the height of the current reel by a random number (up to a max of 10 rows).
• Super Build: these increase the height of all reels by a random number (up to a max of 10 rows).

At the end of the round, once ALL positions are filled, then the total number of coins is added up and the value paid out.

Bet+

There are three different options where you can increase your stake in order to become more likely to trigger the bonus game. The RTP range for this option is from 94.35% to 94.44%. 

• Bonus Boost: costs an additional 30% but makes each spin twice as likely to trigger the bonus game. 
• Bonus Boost Plus: costs an additional 120% but makes each spin five times as likely to trigger the bonus game.
• Bonus Boost Ultra: costs 350% of the bet but each spin is ten times as likely to trigger the bonus game.