If you value the company of four-legged animals, you may be interested in Happy Hooves PowerNudge, an online slot from busy developer Pragmatic Play. To date, this is the third PowerNudge slot, and so far, each one has tweaked the mechanic to do slightly different things. Happy Hooves PowerNudge offers the most tweaked version so far, but don't get the idea that this is a majorly innovative game, as the PowerNudging abilities have been 'inspired' by another popular online slot. You'll see.
Happy Hooves PowerNudge begins life in a barn decked out with saddles, hay, buckets, and the like, which might not be the most inspiring place for a stallion to stamp about. Fortunately, trigger the PowerNudge Respin feature, and the action heads outdoors to a wavy grassed pasture, all blazing sun and big sky - a better place for a horse to roam free. Till then, it's back to the barn, where in the middle sits a 5-reel, 4-row grid, where 40 paylines are provided to land winning combinations of 3 to 5 of a kind across.
The forty fixed paylines are partly the reason why bet selection starts quite high, at 40 p/c before rising to $/€100 per spin at the most, making it unsuitable for some of the low rollers. A highly volatile game (5 out of 5), Happy Hooves PowerNudge can be found at several RTP settings, with the highest being 96.49%, dipping to 96.29% when buying the PowerNudge Respin bonus round. Any device can be used to get a gallop up, from tablets, mobiles, to desktops.
The regular pay symbols in Happy Hooves PowerNudge are split into four groups of blue, purple, green, and red coloured symbols. Each colour group has one low-pay royal and a high-pay horse. Royals are J, Q, K, A, paying 0.75 to 1.25 times the stake, while the highs are four horse symbols worth 1.875 to 3.75 times the bet for five of a kind. There are also four wild symbols – blue wilds, purple wilds, green wilds, and red wilds. Each wild substitutes for the pay symbols of the same colour.
So far, the PowerNudge feature has proved its versatility by doing something a bit different each time it has been used. In Happy Hooves PowerNudge, mystery symbols can appear on any reel, and when they land, they trigger the PowerNudge feature. In the base game, the mystery symbols in view reveal one of the coloured wild symbols or a Golden symbol. When Golden symbols are revealed, they spin to reveal a bet multiplier or a scatter. The total of all bet multipliers is paid, and if enough scatters are in view, the bonus round triggers when the nudges are complete. After the mystery symbols have revealed their symbols, all reels holding mystery symbols nudge down one position, while all other reels respin. This process repeats until there are no more mystery symbols on the reels.
Whenever 3 or more scatter symbols land, the PowerNudge Respin feature is awarded. The round begins with a spin that lands at least 8 mystery symbols split over two reels. Then the mystery symbols nudge and reels respin as in the base game. When no more mystery symbols are in view, the feature ends. When mystery symbols reveal symbols in the PowerNudge Respin feature, it is possible they reveal a new symbol called the Nudge Up. This symbol nudges reels up the number of positions equal to the number of Nudge Up symbols on the screen. In addition, the PowerNudge Respin feature has a multiplier that is applied to the win on each respin. The multiplier starts at x1, increasing by +1 for each nudge and respin.
If applicable, players can buy the PowerNudge Respin feature rather than rely on scatters to land organically. The cost is 100x the total bet.
Happy Hooves is a peculiar mix of unique elements and blatant copying. Starting with the newish bits, the pay symbol grouping is different and adds a new dimension to the mystery symbol reveal since there are four wilds that have to line up with the right coloured pay symbols to be of any use. During testing, this system proved to be more interesting than it was originally feared to be. Amongst the mismatched symbols and wilds were a few hits, so it turned out to be fairly entertaining. Not sure how widespread the idea will catch on, but hey, it's something different to try out.
Less original is the mystery symbol PowerNudge feature which has been lifted straight from Push Gaming's thriller Razor Shark. Happy Hooves is a less dynamic game, and bet multipliers tended to be pretty small, with no mention of scoring anything like the 2,500x multiplier symbol possible in Razor Shark. It's a less dynamic game all around, really, and while there's something soothing about stallions running wild in the prairies, Happy Hooves has a fairly standard, plain look, lacking the unique look and feel of the slot it's, kind of, trying to imitate. So much so that it's hard to form many passionate convictions. It does what it does, the test run was okay, it's got a win cap of 5,000x the bet, but there's no major desire to return to its barn/grassland setting for another bash any time soon.
Perhaps those who liked the gameplay of Razor Shark but have galeophobia might be intrigued by the PowerNudge Respin alternative. It doesn't plumb any hidden aquatic depths nor reach anywhere near the dizzy heights of Push Gaming's classic, yet the central features are similar and might suit players keen for a less brutal/less potentially rewarding version of them.
Play for real money
