Players, bust out your denim overalls and plaid shirts for Chicken Drop, a farmyard themed slot designed by provider Pragmatic Play. Utilising a cluster pays/ tumble wins combination to link together wins, the game also benefits from a couple of progressive features in the form of symbol size upgrades and multiplier upgrades. Topping it all off is a round of free spins, where decent potential wins are possible.
Like other grid slots Pragmatic Play has produced, the studio has gone for an ultra-bright, cheerful presentation, ramming the view with big red barns, lush green fields, trees, and bulging-eyed chickens. In real life, things occur during food production that might be a little tough for non-farm constitutions to handle. Not this farm, though. Chicken Drop is set in the sort of place where chicken wings and drumsticks are grown in Petri dishes rather than off animals themselves. The gaming takes place on a 7x7 sized panel, dropping in 49 colourful symbols on each spin.
Played using a 7x7 sized panel while allowing bets from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin to be set, the game caters to players after something a bit more volatile, as the game comes shipped with a volatility rating of 5 out of 5. The RTP is one area where Pragmatic Play games usually rank quite highly, with Chicken Drop generating a theoretical return value of 96.5% in its default form. Be aware though RTP can be found at lower levels, so always have a quick check. The game completes a cheery set of figures with a respectable max win cap, revealed below.
Dropping 49 colourful symbols on each spin, the aim of Chicken Drop is to land clusters made up of 5 or more matching symbols for a win and to trigger the tumble feature. Most symbols in the game are farm-related, well, aside from the card suits, followed by mushrooms, acorns, corn, blueberries, and strawberries. This final symbol is the most profitable, and if you can land a cluster of 37+ strawberries, a coin win worth a massive 1,000x the stake is coming your way.
One thing Pragmatic Play is to be commended on in regards to their grid slots is they generally fork off in their own direction rather than use a standard collect winning clusters to trigger features approach. What you want to look out for here are tumbles, a couple of progressive modifiers, free spins, and a feature buy option.
Central to the action is the tumble feature which removes winning clusters from the game board, dropping new symbols down into the gaps. This can lead to repeat wins from single spins, only ending when no new winning clusters hit.
The progressive features launch when the watering can or 4 leaf clover symbols appear. Watering cans land first, highlighting an area of the grid. The more cans, the bigger the area can be from 2x2 to 6x6. When 4 Leaf Clovers hit, they accrue a multiplier starting at x2, rising to x10. When there are no more upgrades or clusters in view, an egg symbols is dropped on the grid, turning all symbols in the highlighted area into the same matching pay symbol – triggering the tumble mechanic again.
The main event is a round of free games, triggered when 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols land to award 10, 15, or 20 free spins. If there are any upgrades in place when the feature triggers, they are carried over and do not reset for the duration of the feature. On every single free spin, when tumbles have completed, a new symbols type and space is selected on the grid for an egg drop to occur - functioning in the same way as described above, including size upgrades and progressive multipliers. The feature may be retriggered indefinitely as well, when 4 or 5 scatter symbols land, adding +5 additional spins to the remaining total.
As mentioned, Chicken Drop ships with a feature buy button, in jurisdictions where available. Paying 100x the total stake guarantees entrance to free spins.
Like an actual chicken farm, Chicken Drop gets pretty manic at times, fuelled by features that help boost each other to produce exciting moments. There are no qualms with what Chicken Drop does. Pragmatic Play has come up with an interesting interplay of egg drops and progressive features to ramp up potential wins. It's nice to get a taste of them in the base game occasionally, but knowing an egg drop will land on each free spin provides extra incentive to stick it out for the bonus round.
Where Chicken Drop falls a little flat is in its generic nature. The concern is that it looks and feels a lot like other grid slots Pragmatic Play has done, such as the Fruit Party duo - though features are completely different. In regards to extras, Chicken Drop has more in common with Fat Santa in some ways though it is far from being an imitator as such. Chicken Drop also shares the same win cap as the two Fruit Party games as well, maxing out at 5,000 times the stake. For players interested in the odds, Chicken Drop compares quite favourably in general but is by far the least likely of the three to hit its top payout with a likelihood of 1 in 4,166,667.
Chicken Drop ends up being another Pragmatic Play game with the means of delivering gaming that does get the pulse racing at times. However, it lacks an unnameable something to make it really stick in your mind and stand out from the dozens of other grid slots out there. There is an enjoyable lightness to it; the big-eyed rubber chicken thing is always good for a laugh or two, yet once the gaming's done, it lacks a killer dynamic to have you rushing back to the farmyard for more.
Play for real money
