It's funny, when reviewing The Dog House Megaways, we bought up the notion of there being two broad categories of people - dog people and cat people. Apparently, we were wrong, so consider this something of an erratum. As well as dogs and cats, it seems our avian brothers and sisters are also high up the list – if we're using The Bird House from Pragmatic Play as an indicator. As well as possessing a similar name, the rest of the game is a dead ringer for the 2019 release The Dog House. That is, of course, apart from the theme, which moves players out of the burbs to the countryside for some hearty corn-fed action.
Like The Dog House, The Bird House is a simple yet cheerful looking game, presenting a glimpse of the good life on either side of a red-roofed game grid. There's a modern windmill, a pond for water, plenty of food lying or clucking about, making this one farmstead potentially well and truly off-grid. Whether this has been done in a bid to save the environment or as a retreat for escaping catastrophic black swan events, or it's just a regular farm, players can pick the scenario that suits them best.
The Bird House is played on a 5-reel, 3-row game panel, supplying 20 fixed paylines to hit winning combinations on. Being a simple reskin job, everything else about The Bird House has stayed the same. This includes a variable RTP value, where the most optimal setting is 96.49%, and volatility which Pragmatic Play has rated as 5 out of 5. Playable across all devices, stakes range from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin.
To win some cash, regular symbols pay in adjacent reels from left to right, starting from the leftmost reel. Canines are out, and birds are in, with four of them used as the highest value symbols. Five birds are worth a payout of 10 to 37.5 times the stake when they hit. After the premiums are mid value worms and nests, then 10-A card ranks, making up the low pays. Lastly, a birdhouse image appears on the wild symbol, present on reels 2, 3, or 4 only. Wilds substitute for all symbols except the bonus symbol and may come with a random multiplier of x2 or x3. If more than one wild multiplier is used in a win, the multiplier values on the payline are added to each before being applied.
The Bird House offers nothing new that wasn't there before, so aim to come across a free spins bonus game with sticky wild multipliers. The golden egg scatter symbol is what you want to see, appearing only on reels 1, 3, or 5. Hit 3 of them at once to trigger the free spins round, and collect a payout worth 5x your stake.
Before the bonus round begins, a grid made up of 3 reels holding 3 symbols each appears for a single spin. Each position reveals a value, all of which are added up as the awarded number of free spins. During free spins, all wild symbols that hit on reels 2, 3, or 4 remain sticky for the rest of the bonus round. These sticky wilds carry a random multiplier which is revealed when it lands and stays this way for the duration of the feature. Make the most of them because free spins cannot be retriggered.
A minor alteration here or there might have helped explain why we got a bird-themed remake of a doggy slot classic while avoiding possible disappointments that fans waiting for something new might have had. Then again, perhaps the disappointment won't be so great since the features used in the original The Dog House game went down well the first time around. Still, The Bird House does ever so slightly feel like it was made to fulfil a quota, something Pragmatic Play seems to have been doing recently.
If cuteness won you over in The Dog House, at least the critters in The Bird House are just as adorable, bringing a feisty yet loveable Angry Bird 'tude with them, so that's something. As to the rest, it's a struggle to think of anything to say which wasn't laid out in The Dog House review. Sticky wild multipliers are still the bees' knees when they land in numbers during free spins and help fire off wins on the way to the game's overall potential of 6,750x the bet. From a cute yet potent gaming standpoint, both slots perform as well as each other.
The Bird House, like its canine-themed colleague, doesn't flap its wings as vigorously as The Dog House Megaways did, yet there is something special about the original that still makes it a tempting proposal for plenty of players. We can't help but wonder how much those wide-eyed, tongues-a-hanging out, loveable pooches contributed to the original game's charm, though, so the jury is out if their clucking counterparts will be received as warmly.
So, The Bird House fails to make any significant impact on the growth and development of online gambling, though that's no biggie if a cute game's all you're after. Despite not adding much which wasn't already there, The Bird House can't help but be a simple, entertaining game that's effortlessly likeable regardless.
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