Pied Piper

No human is good at everything. This is something early humans discovered, and, as a result, formed societies in which they took up different specialisations. For the longest time, everyone was just a farmer – up until the industrial revolution shifted things along, and now you had dedicated jobs that allowed people to work without ever thinking of ploughing the field. This expands to even today – when something goes wrong, you call a handyman to fix it. And if you relinquish pay, you may just find that your kids have followed him out of town because he plays a magic flute. Wow, fairy tale worlds really make you appreciate the modern judicial system, don’t they? But the fairy tale of Pied Piper and his enchanting flute that can solve the rat problem of the King’s city have been heard by plenty and the story has now been conveyed into a slot format by Quickspin. With a 5×4 playing field with 40 paylines, and several special features, it awaits to bestow its prize on those lucky few that the King deems worthy.

Visually speaking, we quite like some aspects of it. The King’s beard is worthy of a game all of its own, and the queen, princess and mice all look straight from a fairy tale picture book. But where this slot really shines are the animations. The way the Pied Piper moves across the reels and the mice march along with him is really well done, and might be one of the most satisfying movements we’ve seen. It certainly helps that big prizes usually follow in its wake!

The gameplay end of things is satisfying when the bonuses are appearing, and rather boring when they’re not. In our experience, the special features were never too far away, but the real meat when it comes to winning comes to the free spins. If you enjoy chasing bonuses, then Pied Piper will be awesome for you to play, but if that’s not your thing, you may want to look elsewhere.

You can play this slot for $0.20 up to $100 per spin, which no doubt appeases both lower end gamblers as well as high rollers who don’t mind sinking a lot of cash in at once to pull out ahead. And honestly, we wouldn’t blame them for giving Pied Piper a go. Not when it can pay out 1,456x the wager when the free spins start rolling around. Sadly, we were never able to reach those height, but we scored a solid 140x our stake once with free spins, and that was the highest we have managed to peak.

When it comes to symbols, we’re generally positive about them, save for the obvious poker card icons that cost this slot a few points. The symbols you see all relate to the original fairy tale from which the game takes the story from – fortunately, Quickspin decided to leave out the part where the Pied Piper enchants all the children and steals them from their parents to get his payment.

There are several bonuses to consider. The Piper is considered a 4×1 symbol and a Wild, so when he lands in full view, he moves to the left of the reel, and brings any other Wilds along with him as he moves. The reels also re-spin on each movement, which can pile in a nice sum of wins quickly, and is possible to activate even during free spins. The best part about the moving Piper is that he can be retriggered. The free spins, in contrast, aren’t as interesting. They reward ten free spins, and guarantee at least a single Wild will appear in each of them, but that’s about it. It does give a lot more winning potential, however, so it’s much better to try and get the free spins.