When it comes to online gambling, our piggy friends are often associated with money, banking, and the finer things in life. It's funny because, in the real world, pigs are pretty happy rolling around in mud, eating leftovers, just mucking around, living their best lives, unconcerned by wealth or riches. Perhaps then, the association of pigs and wealth in online slots is a way developers satirise bankers or the ultra-rich as… greedy little pigs? Whatever the real reason, pigs in slots like money and here's another example of the popular online gambling trope. Titled Piggy Bankers, it comes from developer Pragmatic Play and places pigs amidst money, a Banknote Reel feature, respins, roaming full reel wilds, plus free spins.
A sumptuous living room, hall, or reception room, it's hard to say for sure, is where the base game for this particular debauchery is located. Rich people famously have houses with way more rooms than they probably need. According to Google, the largest private residence in the world is the Istana Nurul Imam Palace in Brunei, which has 1,788 rooms and 257 bathrooms. That's a lot of bathrooms. Triggering free spins moves play into a real cash pit, a room overflowing with gold coins, jewels, and bundles of banknotes. All highly motivating stuff for the money minded out there.
>Piggy Bankers is played on a 5x4 grid with a special reel on top of the main gaming area called the Banknote Reel. It's a highly volatile slot, producing an RTP of 96.05% or 96.03% when buying free spins, though be aware that lower return models are available, as well. Bet selection ranges from 20 p/c to $/€240 per paid spin whilst buying the free spins features costs 80 times the bet.
The high life is expressed through Piggy Bankers' premium symbols, which depict cigars, a liquor bottle, scales, and a golden piggy bank, while the low pays are a set of 10 to A playing card ranks. The game comes with 20 paylines, and hitting a 5 OAK winning line is worth 2 to 3 times the bet when made up of low pays, or 4 to 12.5 times the bet for the high pay picture symbols. The Piggy Banker and the Lady Piggy Banker each have their own wild symbol and are able to substitute for any regular paying symbol. Wilds have the same value as the golden piggy bank when creating wild line wins. Wilds are 1x1 in size but form big wilds when stacked, up next.
>Here's where we get to figure out what that top reel does while covering the other extras, such as the Wild Respins feature and free spins.
On any spin, Banknote symbols and blanks randomly land on this top special reel. Banknotes display bet multipliers of 0.5x to 100x, and they may also display Free Spins. Whenever a full vertical stack of wild symbols lands beneath a Banknote, the value is awarded.
Whenever a full vertical stack of wild symbols land, the stack transforms into a big wild, either the Piggy Banker Wild or the Lady Piggy Banker Wild, and the respins feature is triggered. During repsins, the Piggy Banker Wild moves one reel to the right until it leaves the screen, while the Lady Piggy Banker Wild moves one reel to the left until it leaves the screen. Respins continue for as long as there are big wilds on the grid, ending when no more big wilds are in view. If the Piggy Banker and the Lady Piggy Banker meet on the same reel, then free spins are triggered. If there is a Banknote above where they meet, its value is awarded times 2.
Free spins are triggered when the two different big wilds meet or when the free spins banknote is collected. Either way, 5 free spins are awarded. In free spins, a new banknote with a value of 1,000x may appear on the Banknote Reel.
The respin feature is available in free spins. When two big wilds meet, an extra free spin is awarded, then both wilds get an x2 multiplier, and respins continue with them splitting apart, each moving towards the edge of the grid. Split big wilds also have a multiplier of x2. Big wilds with multipliers meeting any other big wild have their multiplier increase by +1 for each subsequent meet.
When free spins begin, all big wilds from the triggering respin are removed from the grid, and when free spins end, respins continue from the point where the round was triggered. The free spins banknote is removed from the Banknote Reel while the free spins feature is active.
For 80x the bet, players can buy access to the free spins round, which will be triggered by collecting a free spins banknote or by 2 big wilds meeting.
>Piggy Bankers feels like it might have forked off Pragmatic's earler release Piggy Bank Bills, but if so, then the fork was definitely a hard one. The two slots offer very different styles of gaming, though wealth, pigs and the use of banknotes lightly link the two games together. Piggy Bankers is the more conventional of the two, yet it is a fairly innovative game. Plus, it possesses the usual Pragmatic Play gleam that's easy on the eyes and ears, making it easy to get stuck in for a bit to see how Piggy Bankers unfolds.
On the whole, Piggy Bankers worked quite well, too, possessing several moving parts to keep your eyes on. The moving full reel wilds are more interesting than they might have been, partly because they award prizes they land under on the Banknote Reel, partly because they can technically get multipliers. Prizes from the Banknote Reel are a bit of a consolation a lot of the time since the values are often quite low, though the higher-level ones aren't bad, and there's the mythical 1,000x floating-around free spins.
As for triggering respins while free spins are active, bestowing multipliers when big wilds meet is another nice touch, despite proving to be a real mission getting big wilds to meet during the review. Even on a bonus buy spree. Maybe don't count on that happening a lot, but rather see it as a good piece of fortune when or if it ever happens. You'd think a good bit of multiplying will need to occur, though, to have a chance of hitting Piggy Bankers' max win of 10,000x the bet.
After a run-through, it did seem like it might be tough to win big without multipliers (or the 1,000x banknote), which were a relatively rare occurrence. But, all in all, Piggy Bankers pulls together some interesting gaming ideas to create a decent wealthy piggy-themed game for players into this sort of thing to sink their teeth into.
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