Buggin

Buggin: Slot Overview

Bugs might be little more than an annoyance to a lot of folks, maybe a little scary for others, but when you peer into their world, they can be quite extraordinary. For instance, if you think having one or two kids is tough, spare a thought for the African driver ant, which produces up to 4 million eggs every 25 days, not to mention the critical role insects have in helping keep ecosystems balanced. Maybe we should keep the positives in mind before mindlessly squashing the next ant scurrying about the kitchen pantry. Maybe not. Either way, here is the online slot Buggin, that developer ELK Studios has used to honour some of the industrious creatures in the animal kingdom.

Buggin is an outdoors game set in a park or a particularly nice back garden, which sports a pond covered in lily pads, a charming table and chair set up, well-tended lawns, flowers, trees, all that sort of stuff. The ideal sort of environment for sipping a cup of Earl Grey tea with milk and honey while finding inner peace amongst nature - provided an influx of bugs doesn't spoil the mood. Not to worry, bugs are our friends in this game, and ELK Studios has ensured they all look charmingly loveable.

Buggin is a cluster pays slot, where wins are created when at least 5 identical symbols are connected to each other in horizontal and/or vertical directions. This occurs on a 7x7 game grid, dropping 49 symbols in each game round. Bets of 20 c to $/€100 may be staked in this highly volatile slot, where the RTP is ELK's usual 94% figure.

Four objects of the garden are Buggin's low pays - a leaf, a berry, grapes, and a mushroom, joined by 4 semi-humanised bug characters as the high pays. For landing a cluster made up of 5 identical symbols, players scoop 0.1 to 1 times the bet, while the largest 12+ symbol clusters pay 1.5 to 100 times the stake. A stack of different wild symbols may appear on Buggin's board, which are able to substitute regular symbols, amongst other things.

Buggin: Slot Features

Cascades are one of Buggin's core features, working alongside big symbols, a progress meter, Feature Wilds, Wild Redrops, free drops, super free drops, and X-iter feature buys.

Big Symbols

Any pay symbol may appear as big symbols of 2x2 or 3x3 in dimension. Big symbols pay as the amount of 1x1 symbols they cover.

Cascading Wins

Winning symbols pop off the board by the cascading wins system, and symbols drop down to replace them. Wild symbols are not removed when used in a win. If there were no wilds in the cluster win, a wild symbol with an x1 multiplier is spawned in one of the empty positions before symbols drop. Multiple wild symbols in a winning cluster merge into 1 wild, adding their multiplier values together. A wild symbol may be part of several winning clusters, so it may be added to several wild mergers. Multiple wild multipliers in a win will be added together. When no new win appears, the cascade run ends, and if there are any collected Feature Wilds, they are then released.

Progress Bar & Feature Wilds

Winning symbols advance the progress bar above the reels. When reaching the end of the progress bar, a random Feature Wild is collected on the leftmost empty slot in the Wild Inventory, and the meter is reset. When no more wins occur, the collected Feature Wilds are released onto the reels. A Feature Wild on the grid that is part of a win activates, performing its modifier and remaining a wild.

• Big - expands a pay symbol into a 2x2 or 3x3 big symbol. Covered symbols are removed.
• Multiplying - adds its multiplier value to all wild symbols not part of a win.
• Random - replaces 2 to 4 pay symbols with regular wilds.
• Removing - removes all instances of the lowest paying symbol from the grid.
• Upgrading - upgrades all instances of a pay symbol type.

Wild Redrops

For each spin, one of the Feature Wilds on the Wild Inventory will have a Wild Redrop target on it. Collecting Feature Wilds up to the target awards a Wild Redrop with this amount of Feature Wilds. Collecting additional Feature Wilds adds to the number of Feature Wilds in the Wild Redrop. Wild Redrops run when no more wins occur. Regular wilds remain sticky, and the collected Feature Wilds are prefilled and released. Wild Redrops can retrigger but are not available in the super bonus game.

Free Spins Bonus Game

Landing 3 scatters triggers 7 free spins. If at least one of the triggering scatters is a super scatter, then 7 super free spins are awarded. Regular wild symbols are sticky going into the bonus round and between free spins. At the start of super free spins, all Feature Wilds in the Wild Inventory are locked. They are unlocked when collected for the first time. The following free spin begins with a prefill and release of the number of unlocked Feature Wilds. In both round types, landing 3 scatter symbols triggers +3 free spins, and if at least one is a super scatter, free spins are upgraded to super free spins.

X-iter

The X-iter feature allows players to buy into various game modes, all having the same 94% RTP value.

• Bonus Hunt - drops cost 3x the bet and have a higher chance of triggering the bonus.
• 2 Feature Wilds - 5x the bet for a game round with 2 Feature Wilds prefilled and released.
• 4 Feature Wilds - 10x the bet for a game round with 4 Feature Wilds prefilled and released.
• Bonus - 100x the bet to buy free spins.
• Super Bonus - 500x the bet to buy super free spins.

Buggin: Slot Verdict

It took a little while to warm to Buggin, but when everything clicked into place, its high build quality and clever set of features became apparent. Few casino game developers are as skilled as ELK Studios at cramming a ton of extras into a slot and glowing everything up in a glossy outer coat. By the same token, few casino game makers insist on the 94% default RTP either, which has become the team's go to value. There's also been some dissatisfaction within the community regarding the weak/scripted math models. A pain, since ELK Studios games tend to be rather well-made indeed. Often brutal, often merciless, but darn, don't they look good while juggling a flock of interesting gaming mechanics.

This assessment applies to a number of ELK slots, and it certainly applies to Buggin. The paytable wording can be a little tricky to decipher at times, but the gist of Buggin is to hit as many winning clusters as the game will allow to collect Feature Wilds and release them on the reels in the hopes of cobbling together even more clusters to keep the whole shebang rolling along. It won't hurt to stack wild multiplier values in the process if possible, as well. Indeed, it was during a decent super bonus buy that this occurred, and when it happens, Buggin can be a real treat of carry-on action, bringing back memories of another successful ELK Studios cluster pays slot, Propaganda, what with all the wild multiplier merging and whatnot.

Have to say, Propaganda was the more satisfying slot overall while also offering a higher return value. Buggin is great at what it does, however, and has the goods to potentially knock the socks off cluster pays players, maxing out at 10,000x the bet - theoretically speaking. In Buggin, ELK Studios has once again squeezed out a polished to a gleam slot, which, like ants at a picnic, is let down by certain statistical elements.