Piggy Cluster Hunt: Slot Overview

Hey players, if you're in the mood to step into a game 'where the simple joys of rural life blend seamlessly with the exhilarating thrill of gaming,' then we might have a slot for you. At least, that's the description of Piggy Cluster Hunt, its maker and Hacksaw Gaming sister studio, Bullshark Games, has provided in the About The Game section. Sounds alright, too, chilling out in nature, hanging with a porcine chap with a gun, trying to get lucky while spinning a cluster-paying grid slot. Oops, almost said "y'all" there, so in the mood we were getting for this.

Piggy Cluster Hunt nails the rural life part, as players join a piggy character at his lake (or river) house, a million miles from the city, where the air is clean, a little chilly from the mountain snow, and the wild nature hasn't been completely sullied by human hands. Not sure about the gun part, though; what exactly is this pig planning on blasting? Pesky mosquitoes? Piggy Cluster Hunt does have Exploding Wilds, too, and they're one of its funner features, though, from a game world perspective, barrels detonating out here in the weeds would spoil the peace of the area.

Where the action takes place is on a 7x7 game board, which uses a cluster pays system to forge wins. When 5 or more identical symbols land next to each other in vertically and/or horizontally adjacent positions, a win is formed. The winning symbols are cleared from the reels, and symbols drop down to replace them by the cascade mechanic, a process that repeats until no new win hits. Garnering a 3 out of 5 rating, Piggy Cluster Hunt is a medium volatile slot, available in two RTP models, where the default return value is 96.23%.

Taking bets from 10 c to $/€100 per spin, the objects of the outdoors are Piggy Cluster Hunt's regular paying symbols. They are a compass, rope, a knife, an ammo box, binoculars, a slingshot, a trap, and a bullet casing. Hitting a 5 OAK winning cluster pays out 0.2 to 0.6 times the bet, while the highest cluster levels have 36+ matching symbols in them, and they pay 25 to 300 times the bet. Wilds with the piggy character on them are able to help cobble wins together by substituting for any regular pay symbol.

Piggy Cluster Hunt: Slot Features

As well as cascades, Piggy Cluster Hunt has features such as a progressive win multiplier in all phases of play, Exploding Wilds, free spins, and feature buys.

Progressive Win Multiplier

Above the reels sits a multiplier bar with three slots. Each spin populates 0 to 3 win multiplier values in certain positions on the bar – they can be additive values of 2x to 100x or multiplicative values of x2 to x10. The value of the first multiplier is applied to any initial win. After the cascade, if there are additional wins, the first and second multipliers are either added or multiplied together and applied to the wins on the additional cascade. After this, the first, second, and third multipliers are combined and applied to any of the following cascades. Empty multiplier bar positions in the base game mean no multiplier is applied. Free spins cannot have empty positions.

Exploding Wilds

When an Exploding Wild lands, it detonates and adds up to 8 extra wild symbols around the original wild. In the base game, at least 2 wilds are added; in free spins, at least 4 wilds are added.

Wild Call Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 FS scatter symbols in the base game starts the feature with 8, 12, or 15 free spins, respectively. In free spins, all three positions on the multiplier bar always have values.

Buy Bonus

Four options are presented at the feature buy menu, which are:

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins – each spin is 3 times more likely to trigger free spins for 2x the bet. Highly volatile, RTP 96.35%.
• FeatureSpins – each spin guarantees at least 1 Exploding Wild for 10x the bet. Medium volatile, RTP 96.2%.
• Wild Call Free Spins – 8, 12, or 15 free spins for 100x the bet. Highly volatile, RTP 96.19%.
• Wild Call Free spins – 8, 12, or 15 free spins where the minimum multiplier in the final position is 5x-10x for 200x the bet. Highly volatile, RTP 96.31%.

Piggy Cluster Hunt: Slot Verdict

Sometimes you play a cluster paying grid slot, and the focus is on collecting winning symbols, triggering features at set collection points, maybe going all the way to win free spins in a rule-heavy, feature-filled experience. Piggy Cluster Hunt, by contrast, is a relatively simpler game operating a streamlined process with fewer moving parts. So much so that it reawakened memories of partner Hacksaw Gaming's early days. Back when the studio was dropping stuff like Cash Compass, The Bomb, or Forest Fortune, to name three. Before Hacksaw discovered its dark side and began stomping all over the wrong side of the tracks, as such.

Bullshark Games isn't quite there yet, but the team has made a playable grid slot that cluster pays groupies might find intriguing. Its significant top prize is 15,000x the bet, which you would assume is technically achievable in the base game and free spins, given the size of the potential multipliers available from the multiplier bar coupled with the higher level symbol payout values. Piggy Cluster Hunt relies on those multipliers a lot, too, as it's not really a game that dramatically snowballs as it progresses, like some can. There is a bit of snowballing when consecutive cascades chain multipliers together, though not like some grid slots can string along. You either get the multiplier values displayed on a spin (then activate them), or you don't. Exploding Wilds are a plus, though, and make a strong contribution to Piggy Cluster Hunt's overall entertainment value.

All in all, Piggy Cluster Hunt was a decent cluster pays game. Not a future leader of the pack, perhaps, but Bullshark Games have thought up some neat ideas that fit together nicely when they're playing ball to provide a hard and fast uncomplicated grid slot.