Watermelons in the shape of Pacman, travelling around a gaming grid eating coins and Ghost Melons… If it sounds like something the Surrealists might have jotted down on a napkin while inebriated, you're pretty much on the right tangent to take on Pragmatic Play and Reel Kingdom's Mighty Munching Melons. This one's so peculiar it was hard to decide whether to laugh or just wonder what the team was thinking when they made it. Ay well, time to melon up.
Right off the bat, Mighty Munching Melons' look reawakened memories of prior releases from Reel Kingdom, such as Tic Tac Take and Star Pirates Code. Not great games. A tad baffling, which is a word that fits Mighty Munching Melons like a charm. First, there's the setting. Is it a greenhouse where watermelons are grown? That would make sense, but what about those clouds? Do they mean the greenhouse is perched on the edge of a mountain, or is it flying through the sky? So many questions, so few answers. If you're on a mobile, flip Mighty Munching Melons to portrait mode. More questions, right? Scratches head and continues.
Mighty Munching Melons' mechanical setup is straightforward. The gaming occurs on a 5-reel grid, each reel holding 4 rows and crossed by 10 paylines. On the back end is a highly volatile math model, possessing a default RTP of 96.05% whether betting 20c to $/€240 per spin or when using the Ante Bet, which increases the stake by 50% while increasing the chance of triggering the bonus round.
The base game's pretty boring since there are no features present other than a 2-scatter assist thing, but some of the symbol values might be of interest. Not so much the J-A royals, awarding 2 to 5 times the bet for a 5 symbol winning line, yet values pick up amongst the high pay cherries, grapes, lemons, and oranges, where it is possible to win 10 to 1,000x the bet for a 5 OAK hit. There ain't no wild.
On the topic of features, Mighty Munching Melons' base game has nothing much to mention, which leaves the bonus round and the bonus buy function.
When exactly 2 scatters land in the base game, there is a chance a 3rd scatter is introduced to the reels from outside, awarding the bonus game. When 3 scatters are in view, the bonus game triggers. When activated, the reels are cleared so only Money symbols, Melons, Melon Ghosts, or blanks may hit. The round starts with 3 respins. All Money symbols that hit reset the number of respins back to 3. Money symbols have values of 0.1 to 500 times the bet and remain in place until they are collected or the bonus ends. When a Melon Ghost hits, it randomly changes position after every respin.
When in view, a Melon symbol moves in a random direction until it wraps around the edge of the screen and returns to the position it landed in. As it moves, it collects all Money symbols in its path, adding their values to the total win. The first Melon to hit has a multiplier of x1, and each following Melon increases its multiplier by +1. The multiplier applies to the values of all Money symbols a Melon collects. When a Melon collects a Melon Ghost while moving, it grows to 2x2 or 3x3 in size, so it is able to collect more Money symbols. Big Melons move horizontally to wrap around the edges of the screen and return to the position they collected the Melon Ghost. Randomly, the Melon may move up and down towards the right edge of the screen, collecting Money symbols in its path, then return to the Melon Ghost position.
At random, the number of respins may increase from 3 to 4 till the end of the round. When there are no more respins left or the reels are full of symbols, a 3x3 Melon appears to collect all the symbols from the screen – this Melon does not have a multiplier. If the screen was full of symbols when the 3x3 Melon appears, after collection, respins are reset back to 3 or 4 and the round continues.
Players have the option of buying the respins bonus round for the cost of 100x the bet. The RTP for doing so remains the same at 96.05%.
Mighty Munching Melons is one of those games you kind of just have to lean back and chuckle to. The test session began with a quick look on a mobile device. In portrait mode, the background imagery is completely different, and the top row was covered by the Mighty Munching Melons name. 'Hmm, okay, maybe something has to occur to unlock the top row?' No, it's just questionable coding that doesn't take into account gamblers playing the game in portrait mode on their phones. From there, the comedy of errors continued till, by the end, it wasn't clear whether Reel Kingdom was trying to make a game they thought players might like or the studio indulged in a quirky in-joke that only a narrow clique of its developers were privy to. Adding the painfully slow gameplay to the mix only exacerbates the issues.
It's funny, Reel Kingdom is more than capable of coming up with major hits; Big Bass Bonanza, anyone? However, the studio is just as good at dredging bizarre games out of the subconscious as well. It's like the Reel Kingdom office has team bonding outings to gel and maybe share ideas, but instead of playing paintball or having drinks at the pub, they consume peyote and wander into the desert where they're guided by animal spirits who show them weird and wonderful ways of making slots. Well, weird, maybe not wonderful as the case may be with Mighty Munching Melons. The 3,000x the bet win cap is hardly the stuff of dreams, either.
Hey, who knows, we might have a surprise hit on our hands here that resonates with a good chunk of gamblers, and that's great. But really, Mighty Munching Melons does not feel as if it's heading towards many bucket lists. No matter. On a positive note, it is nice to have software providers making junk like this, sometimes, in some ways. Such as? Well, Mighty Munching Melons was good for a laugh, and it makes for an amusing sideshow that might help you foster a greater appreciation of the good stuff.
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