Hell’s Hogs

Hell's Hogs: Slot Overview

You might have seen the three little pigs constructing houses out of various building materials, but this must be one of the first times a trio of swine have appeared on bikes in an online slot. Motorbikes, to be precise, and the title 'Hell's Hogs' alludes to things like Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club and the Harley Owners Group (HOG). Hell's Hogs, the online slot, comes from Reflex Gaming, in association with Yggdrasil, and tells the story of three motorcycle-riding pigs, Smokey, Streaky, and The Stud making their way across Highway 240 back in 1948, post-WW2 USA.

Music was the first thing that grabbed us about Hell's Hogs. The rootin' tootin' track conjured up images of blasting along empty stretches of highway, the wind in your hair, eating at a diner and getting back on the bike to do it all again a few hundred miles down the road. Hell's Hogs' visuals aren't too bad, really, depicting a cactus lined stretch of cracked asphalt in a desert, though it's not as evocative as the soundtrack. The UI is still as archaic as it gets, but the sound and graphics are pretty decent for a Reflex Gaming slot.

If Hell's Hog's math model is anything to go by, the experience is closer to easy coasting rather than rough riding. This is partly due to low volatility, which works hand in hand with a hit frequency of 27.39%, or better than 1 one winning spin in 4, theoretically speaking. It all takes place on a 5x3, 20-payline game grid, producing a return to player value of 95.6%. Playable on any device, stakes of 20 p/c to $/€100 may be selected.

The scene gets a bit neon when we turn to the paytable. On it can be found low pay card ranks – clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds, worth 5 to 8 times the stake for five of a kind. Next up are wheels, jukeboxes, and the game's logo, worth 10 to 25x the bet for a line of five. All need at least three of a kind to create a winning line, except the top paying symbol, which needs only two. Wilds appear on any reel to substitute for all symbols except the bonus symbol.

Hell's Hogs: Slot Features

The three pigs in the game are matched with three separate bonus rounds. These are called Piggy in the Middle, Biker Bash, and Wild Ride, plus there's a Mystery Chop Shop Symbol feature padding out the base game.

Chop Shop Symbols

These symbols land randomly in the main game. Each one in view transforms into the same matching pay symbol when they open.

Piggy in the Middle

Landing 3, 4, or 5 Piggy in the Middle symbols triggers this bonus game. On the screen appears 3 pigs on motorbikes, each one displaying prize values or modifiers. Players hit the stop button at the bottom of the screen, and whichever prize or modifier is highlighted at the time is awarded. This continues until the player hits the stop button and a red X is lit up instead of a prize.

Biker Bash

Should at least 3 Biker Bash symbols hit, the Biker Bash feature triggers and 10 free spins are awarded. On the first spin, the win multiplier starts at x1, and it increases by +1 at the end of every spin. It is possible to retrigger this feature, leading to a maximum multiplier of x30.

Wild Ride

This bonus is triggered when 3 Wild Ride bonus symbols hit, awarding you 5 free spins where full reel super wild symbols roam across the reels. One super wild appears on spins 1 and 2, two super wilds on spins 3 and 4, then three super wilds for the final spin on the middle three reels.

Hell's Hogs: Slot Verdict

We must have been in a buoyant mood when reviewing Hell's Hogs because it felt like one of Reflex Gaming's better slots so far. This might sound harsh, but that's not exactly a huge achievement since the previous games of theirs we've encountered haven't been world beaters, to put it lightly. With such a patchy track record, we saddled up Hell's Hogs with few expectations and headed out on the highway. The audio-visuals brought back memories of ELK's Route 777, and created a positive mood to trial what Hell's Hogs had to offer.

With Reflex Gaming, there tends to be one or two (or more) things about their games that don't quite add up. Some quirk in the maths, features not computing, or just straight up wonky presentation. Unfortunately, while Hell's Hog felt like a step in a positive direction, it wasn't immune to this effect. When you get down to it, having three bonus games might be neat from a quantity perspective, none of them is hugely imaginative. Piggy in the Middle had a fun-ish whack a mole quality, Wild Ride offers full reel wilds, which admittedly might get interesting on the final spin, and Biker Bash has an incrementing multiplier, so all fairly familiar stuff. For sure, each bonus round has the ability to excite under the right circumstances, yet stripping away the theme leaves nothing unmissable behind. Another puzzling element was the max win number because the game initially claimed payouts of up to 10,136x the bet were possible. Yet the paytable states the most players can win is 6,690x whatever their stake is. Not sure why there are conflicting claims, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Let's wrap up by saying that Hell's Hogs wasn't too bad for a Reflex Gaming release, and you get the impression they put more thought into this one than usual. Still, a lipstick on a pig feel remains due to the listless math model, somewhat unoriginal features, and the mismatched win numbers.