Come a hoppin' and a droppin' with a bunch of amiable amphibians in an outdoor online slot from Pragmatic Play dubbed Wild Hop & Drop. Frogs are a perennial slot favourite, as seen recently in Push Gaming's Fire Hopper slot, and it's not hard to see why. They're friendly, uber-chilled, and seem happy just hanging out on a lily pad all day seeing what's up. The frogs here are all of these things, yet they also star alongside a batch of lively features. However, Wild Hop & Drop took a fair amount of inspiration for its gameplay from a competitor studio's online slot. To build a bit of mystery, we won't tell you right away which one, but here's a clue – it involved another type of animal that hops…
Wild Hop & Drop is a cluster pays grid slot that bombards the senses with bright visuals, and thick outdoor sound effects, to an almost radioactive degree. Is it to distract from the fact the features have been borrowed, or was Pragmatic Play simply in excellent spirits when they designed Wild Hop & Drop? Either way, players are dropped into a cheerful forest setting with a water feature, thick plant life, posies, a big glowing blue mushroom, and a frog which looks like it's having its mind blown or just really likes what it sees. So far, so brightly technicoloured.
Taking a prime position on your mobile, desktop, or tablet's screen is Wild Hop & Drop's game grid. It's made up of 6 columns and 6 rows, creating a win when 6 or more identical symbols are connected vertically and/or horizontally. A highly volatile game, the maximum return to player value is 96.36% when playing normally, by betting 20 p/c to $/€100 per paid game round, or 96.47% when buying free spins.
Three friendly-looking frogs make up the higher paying symbols on the paytable, while the lows are J-A card royals. Landing a 6 of a kind cluster gets you a payout of 0.5 to 4 times the stake, rising to 20 to 200 times the stake for a cluster containing 26+ matching symbols. Another froggy is displayed on the wild symbol, which substitutes for all normal pay symbols. Wilds appear in the base game in 1x1, 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, or 6x6 size, and when landing in the largest possible size, wilds pay out 5,000x the bet.
Hitting 4 or more scatter symbols in the base game awards 6 free spins. When free spins begin, a 1x1 wild symbol is placed on the reels, where it stays until the end of the feature, moving to random positions between free spins. Now, scatter symbols which land in the bonus round are collected. Every time 4 scatter symbols have been collected, 1-3 free spins are awarded, and the roaming wild symbol increases in size in a progressive manner to 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, then 6x6. When reaching the last level, +1 free spin is awarded. After the fourth retrigger, no more retriggers can occur. If the bonus round was triggered with 5 or 6 scatter symbols, free spins begin with 1 or 2 scatter symbols already collected, respectively.
Lastly, if possible, players can opt to buy free spins instead of triggering them organically. The cost for buying the bonus round is 100x the bet and delivers a triggering spin with 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols.
So… Fat Ribbit, is it, then? It's kind of hard to avoid those sorts of thoughts when the bonus round has so clearly been inspired by Push Gaming's popular 'Fat Series' of slots. So far, the growing roaming wild feature has been used alongside rabbits, vampires, and bankers, so why not froggies, ay? It's not the first-time features have been passed around, whether consentingly or not, and it is unlikely to be the last, so what say we just roll, bounce, hop, whatever, with it for now? Wild Hop & Drop makes it easy to do so in many ways. Its amiable attitude is hard to hold a major grudge against, and it's been designed to the usually high Pragmatic Play standard.
Wild Hop & Drop does use a cluster pays mechanic for generating wins rather than paylines, which is different. Not even the distantly related cousin, Royal Potato, didn't go there, so that's something new, ish. Doing things this way does play well with the growing roaming wild, so 'Fat Series' pundits might be intrigued by the development. What's kind of peculiar is that the game's win cap is the same as the payout value of the 6x6 wild symbol – 5,000x the bet. So, if you reach the largest wild symbol during a bonus round, it's game over, and any other wins you've accrued until that point sort of become null and void. A moot point, perhaps, since a 5,000x win is a 5,000x win, yet it feels a little odd somehow. If the cap had been looser, Wild Hop & Drop could have put up more of a challenge to the larger numbers produced by competitors like Fat Banker or Fat Drac in terms of potential.
To sum up, Wild Hop & Drop won't win many awards for originality, but anyone looking for a Fat Rabbit-style alternative or simply a froggily feel-good cluster paying slot with an exciting bonus round shouldn't have trouble finding that at this lily pad.
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