Wild Swarm Triple Hive: Slot Overview
The good thing about being a beekeeper is you can repeatedly plunder the hive and bees will keep dutifully flying out, getting nectar, and making more honey. It’s an unusual interspecies relationship where insects do a major chunk of the work while their human overlords reap the profit. Software provider Push Gaming has also done quite well from our black and yellow striped friends, beginning with 2018’s Wild Swarm, Wild Swarm 2 six years later, and now Wild Swarm Triple Hive. This latter release is the most expansive one yet, both in terms of feature list and winning potential.
Here ye, here ye, not only are we going to be hanging out with bees, we’ll be doing so with medieval bees. A bit like NetEnt‘s bee slot, Bee Hive Bonanza, Wild Swarm Triple Hive has royal bees (a queen) and those lower down the class food chain. This one takes place in an area where competitions are held by the looks; archery, maybe jousting, though the grandstands are empty, yet dripping with honey for some reason. Following on from 3 Magic Pots, three pots, or in this instance, three Hives, appear above the reels, where bees are collected and various features may trigger.
For some reason, a hexagonal gaming area came to mind when thinking of previous Wild Swarm slots, but no, that would be Play’n GO‘s Honey Rush, which did the unorthodox shaped grid thing. Wild Swarm Triple Hive, like the two before it, is played on a regular 5×4 matrix with 20 paylines to land winning combinations on. It might have the biggest winning potential of the trio, but it’s also got the lowest volatility of the lot, classed by Push Gaming as low-mid. The more preferable RTP is the 96.48% variant, and players may stake 10c to $/€100.
Landing 5 matching J-A royals pays 1x the bet, while a line of 5 purple flowers, white flowers, honey pots, crowns, or dollar signs is worth 1.5x to 10x the bet. The Wild Honey and Sticky Wild symbols substitute for the previously mentioned pay symbols and award 10x the bet if 5 wilds create a winning line. Sticky Wilds only appear in free spins and remain in position till the feature ends.
Wild Swarm Triple Hive: Slot Features
Just as bees travel in swarms, so do the features in Wild Swarm Triple Hive, as there are a lot of them to power through. They include Collectable Bees, a Wheel feature, Jackpot prizes, Queen Bees, free spins and various Hive features.
Collectable Bees
The Wild Honey symbol may appear on the base game with a Collectable Bee on it, of which there are four types:
- Red Knight – collected by the Jackpot Hive for a chance to trigger the Jackpot Hive feature.
- Green Knight – collected by the Multiplier Hive for a chance to trigger the Multiplier Hive feature.
- Yellow Knight – collected by the Sticky Hive for the chance to trigger the Sticky Hive feature.
- Queen Bee – collected by a random Hive for a chance to trigger its feature. It has the highest chance of triggering a Hive feature.
Wheel Feature
The Wheel feature is triggered by landing a Chest symbol on the reels in the base or bonus game. When activated in the base game, a Wheel spins to award:
- Bet multiplier prizes of 2x to 250x.
- The 10x Mini, 25x Minor, 50x Maxi, 100x Mega, or 1,000x Grand Jackpot prizes.
- Jackpot Hive and Multiplier Hive trigger.
- Jackpot Hive and Sticky Hive trigger.
- Multiplier Hive and Sticky Hive trigger.
- Jackpot Hive, Multiplier Hive, and Sticky Hive trigger.
- Random Hive trigger.
During free spins, the Wheel spins to award 2-5 extra spins, Sticky Wilds Reel, 2-5 Jackpot Tokens of the same type (only available when the Jackpot Hive feature is active), Jackpot prizes, or bet multiplier prizes.
Free Spins
When a Collectable Bee is collected by its Hive, the respective free spins feature for that Hive may trigger, awarding 7 free spins when it does. Filling a reel with Sticky Wild symbols awards +1 free spin.
- Jackpot Hive feature – Sticky Wilds land with a Jackpot Token attached. Tokens are collected towards their respective Jackpot Meter. When a Meter is filled, the linked prize is awarded and the Meter resets. It takes 2 Mini, 3 Minor, 4 Maxi, 5 Mega, or 6 Grand Tokens to trigger the corresponding prize. All Jackpots can be won more than once.
- Multiplier Hive feature – multipliers are placed above reels 2, 3, and 4 of x2, x4, and x8, respectively. When filing a reel that has a multiplier above it with Sticky Wilds, the Reel Multiplier value is applied to each Sticky Wild below it. Sticky Wild multipliers are additive.
- Sticky Hive feature – before the first free spin, 4 Sticky Wilds randomly land on the reels.
- Combo Hive features – free spin features can be triggered by combinations of Collectable Bees or from the Wheel feature. Combinations of 2 Hive features awards 10 free spins while 3 hive features awards 12 free spins.
Queen Bee
The Queen Bee may land in any Hive feature or combination of features. When it does so, 1 to 4 Sticky Wild symbols are added to the reels. The Queen Bee acts as a standard Sticky Wild. In the Jackpot Hive feature, the Queen Bee does not award Tokens, but the Sticky Wilds she adds do.
Wild Swarm Triple Hive: Slot Verdict
The initial thought was that Wild Swarm Triple Hive would hit harder than it did. Coming after two warm, well-made slots, maybe expectations were set a little too high. But let’s not start too gloomily; there is a charming game here. Like the previous Wild Swarm slots, Wild Swarm Triple Hive is also warmly well-made, and gearing up for the third instalment was an enticing proposal. A glance over the paytable revealed a long list of features, and winning potential was enormous at 23,902x the bet – more than double compared to its predecessor, so the scene was set to buzz with the bees once again and hopefully scoop handfuls of gooey golden honey.
After a while, and it didn’t take long, Wild Swarm Triple Hive felt like playing a slot from the Games Global group of studios. This is not a criticism; it just seemed a bit commonplace. There are neat touches linking Wild Swarm Triple Hive to the other two games, like Sticky Wilds, and Chest prizes, which is nice, but collecting bees in Hives/pots to trigger free spins, and collecting Tokens to trigger Jackpots didn’t have masses of wow to them. But, the big max win figure and the bright, charming, busy bee game world should have what it takes to draw gamblers’ attention and coins towards it.
Furthermore, if the 3 Pots Mechanic worked for Push Gaming in the past, there’s no reason why it won’t work for them again in Wild Swarm Triple Hive. As usual the build quality is high, as is the charm factor, and Wild Swarm Triple Hive’s features have a universality that shouldn’t have to labour like an overworked bumble bee in order to attract willing participants.
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