You've probably heard the saying 'when pigs fly' to refer to something that just isn't going to happen, but have you ever heard of hippos flying? Due to their size, hippos are probably even less likely to find themselves airborne than their piggy counterparts. A terrifying thought, too, since hippos are one of the deadliest land-based animals; perhaps there's the makings of a movie here somewhere. We had Sharknado, so who knows? Anyhoo, bringing the focus back to the game at hand, we encounter Flying Hippo, a LeoVegas exclusive from software provider Pragmatic Play.
Flying Hippo is a cluster pays grid slot that was odd from start to finish. To start, there's the theme's execution and Flying Hippo came across as low thrills, like it's not entirely sure what it's trying to be. The action is set in the sky, with clouds fluffing about in the lower part of the screen and a starry night sky in the upper part. With no bonus game transition, this is pretty much it. Playing Flying Hippo was like waiting for a punchline which never came.
On the subject of stats, Pragmatic Play has rated the game five out of five for volatility, while the game churns out a return to player value of 93.99%. Clearly, Pragmatic Play has enough friends already. That might be enough for a lot of players to turn their attention aside already, but if not, then the game is available on any device, where players are free to choose a bet from 20 p/c per spin up to a maximum of $/€100 per spin.
The gaming part of Flying Hippo takes place on a 7x7 matrix, with the goal of landing blocks of 5 or more matching symbols, connecting vertically or horizontally. Hit a winning cluster, and the tumble feature removes the winning symbols from the grid, replacing them with new ones from above. Before symbols drop, though, a wild is placed in one of the empty spots at random. Tumbles keep tumbling until no new win is created. As for pay symbols, we find fluffy J-A card symbols representing the low symbols, while the highs are a green star, a red star, a yellow star, and a hippo. Hitting a 5-6 symbol cluster pays 0.1 to 0.75 times the bet, rising to 5 to 50 times the bet for a 25+ sized cluster. Smiley clouds are the wild symbols, appearing on all reels to substitute for any other symbol. There are no other symbols in Flying Hippo.
There isn't a whole lot happening in Flying Hippo to go through. Play mainly revolves around a tumble feature and a Spawning Wild feature, though the latter has quite a few rules attached. However, Flying Hippo does not have a bonus round or free spins phase to it.
When a wild symbol is created by the tumble feature, it may have a multiplier depending on the level of the current spin. This multiplier is applied to any future cluster wins the wild symbol is part of. When a wild symbol contributes to a winning cluster, it is collected by a meter. For every 6 wilds collected this way, the level of the spin increases from 1 to 2, then finally to 3. Before level 1 is hit, wilds appear with no multiplier or an x2;
After level 3 has been reached, the wild collection stops, and when tumbles end, 2 Colossal 2x2 wilds with random multipliers are added in random spots on the board. The value for these wilds can be x3, x5, x7, x10, x15, x25, or x50. If a Colossal Wild overlaps an existing wild, the smaller wild's multiplier is added to the Colossal Wild. If more than one wild is part of the same cluster, their multipliers are added together. After all tumbles in the spin end, the meter is reset back to level 0.
Weird game. There's a floating, flying through-the-clouds effect, and one of the symbols is a hippo, but pardon the pun; the flying hippo concept never really got off the ground. It just felt odd. That wouldn't be such an issue if the gameplay and peripheral parts flew in to save the day, yet they just didn't. All in all, Flying Hippo felt incomplete, or not completely thought through, rushed. As if the designers forgot about the deadline and woke up at midnight of the day before the game was meant to be shipped and quickly threw some code together, tacked on a bunch of dull imagery and gave it a random name. Kind of like when Marge Simpson came up with 'Ghost Mutt'.
That or someone at Pragmatic Play deliberately set out to punk LeoVegas. We would never suggest this was the case, but such was the reaction playing Flying Hippo provoked. Along with the casino, the game's stats would suggest it's setting out to punk players as well. With an RTP that would make the bean counters at ELK Studios jealous, who would want to play Flying Hippo after viewing the return value? It's not like there's a titanic progressive jackpot justifying the weak RTP, or gameplay so stunning players might look the other way. Flying Hippo's wild collection, multiplier building, and colossal wild dumping idea aren't a bad combo. They just get smothered into oblivion by the odd execution, stats, and lack of enthusiasm for the theme.
With Flying Hippo, Pragmatic Play has proven it can certainly be capriciously erratic. The studio's prior game we reviewed was the excellently done The Dog House Multihold, which took a classic slot in a new and exciting direction, thereby reinforcing the team's reputation for being one of the best in the biz. Then, it followed up with Flying Hippo, a pointless release that did little but tarnish the studio's name.
Play for real money
