Crystal Catcher

Crystal Catcher: Slot Overview

Crystals and frogs, ever noticed a connection between the two? No, neither had we until the online slot Crystal Catcher from developer Push Gaming came our way. The reason is Crystal Catcher is a remake of Fire Hopper, a cluster-paying grid slot that employed the frog's natural ability to hop about with a range of features focused around wild multipliers, instant prize symbols, and free games. All of those return, alongside a severe thematic shift, as well as equally severe stat shifts.

The superficial stuff first, and for Crystal Catcher play has moved away from the lily pad-encrusted pond to somewhere below ground, presumably the place where crystals are extracted from the earth. Like before, Crystal Catcher has a top-down view, with its gaming grid taking up the main, central position, while posts, lanterns, and crystals decorate the sides of the screen. It's pretty basic, nothing terribly special to feast your eyes on, and lacking the cute wee charm of the previous game's sprites. Gets the job done, though, and has a thumping mining-esque tune to add atmosphere. It's the sort of tune that makes it easy to imagine bulging muscled workers with picks slung over their shoulders trudging down a mine shaft to start hitting things.

Crystal Catcher hosts its action on a 7x7 game board, with 49 positions and a cluster pays win mechanic. Simply put, when 5 or more matching symbols are adjacent to each other in vertical or horizontal positions, a win is formed. Winning clusters are blasted from the board, and symbols drop down to fill the empty spaces, meaning it is possible to string together sequences of repeat wins on the same spin. Highly volatile, Crystal Catcher comes in several different RTP versions with 96.30% being the highest. Bets vary from 10 p/c to $/€100 per spin, and users may activate the Ante Bet, which increases the chance of triggering the feature for an increased cost of 20%.

On the symbol side, Crystal Catcher has 6 regular pays, all of them crystals of varying types and colours. The pay symbols get progressively more fabulous the higher their value, where a 5-symbol cluster pays 0.2 to 2 times the bet, and a 16+ sized cluster is worth 12.5 to 100 times the stake.

Crystal Catcher: Slot Features

The features have remained more or less the same as before and include 2 wild symbols, Crystal Symbols, Bonus Crystal symbols, a Crystal Catcher feature, Instant Prize symbols, Free Games, and bonus buys.

Wild Symbols

The Wild Beetle symbol and the Wild Gold Beetle symbol are able to replace any regular paying symbol in Crystal Catcher. Each Wild Beetle symbol possesses a multiplier starting at x1. The multiplier is applied to any win the Wild Beetle symbol is part of and increases by 1 when it flies during the Crystal Catcher feature.

Crystal Symbol & Crystal Catcher

Crystal symbols have no value, but when one is in view at the same time as a Wild Beetle symbol, the Crystal Catcher feature is activated. When this happens, the Wild Beetle symbol leaps to the Crystal symbol, and two things happen. The Wild Beetle symbol's multiplier increases by 1, and it leaves a Golden Wild Beetle symbol in the position it leapt from possessing the respective multiplier. Wild Beetle symbol multipliers increase by 1 when they move to collect Crystal symbols, Bonus Crystal symbols or Instant Prize symbols.

Bonus Crystal Symbol & Free Games

When a Bonus Crystal symbol is in view at the same time as a Wild Beetle symbol, the Crystal Catcher Feature activates. When the Wild Beetle symbol collects the Bonus Crystal symbol, 7 free spins are awarded. During free spins, the Wild Beetle symbol is held in place, but Wild Gold Beetle symbols cascade off.

Instant Prizes

Instant Prizes land with values of 1 to 500 times the bet. If a Wild Beetle lands with an Instant Prize symbol in view, it will fly to award the value and increase its multiplier in the process.

Bonus Buy

Players have the chance of buying the normal bonus for 75x the bet or the Super bonus for 275x the bet. The difference being the Super bonus has a greater chance of landing the 3 higher-paying symbols, Crystal symbols, and Instant Prizes.

Crystal Catcher: Slot Verdict

Let's face it, Crystal Catcher is a reskinned, toned-down version of a previous game. As a crystal/mining slot, it is outshone in the graphical department by others in its genre; think of, say, the eye-catching world Print Studios created for its Crystal Golem game, for example, or some of the stuff Nolimit City has plunged down a mine shaft, Dead Canary being one of them. Not that we are casting aspersions on Push Gaming's design talents in any way, but when compared to the bangers in their line-up, Crystal Catcher struggled a bit to impress.

Nevertheless, there are fun times to be had in Crystal Catcher. Fire Hopper was a joy to play, and Crystal Catcher has its moments as well. Since they are part of a second time around viewing, they weren't as impactful, and to be honest, the numerical tweaks are likely to reduce some of Crystal Catcher's appeal as well. Gone is the 50,000x of the last game, replaced with the more down-to-earth, though theoretically more achievable, one would presume, 10,000x the bet possible in Crystal Catcher. Not a total deal breaker on its own, but since Crystal Catcher doesn't have the same level of individual pizzazz its froggy cousin had, the significantly pared-down max win doesn't exactly help its case. For some, at least.

At its core, though, Crystal Catcher does deliver a dependable batch of features. Push Gaming are masters of the leaping, rising multiplier wild concept after all, in part from Fire Hopper, in large part from the wildly successful Jammin' Jars range of slots. There is no doubt thrilling entertainment to be unearthed by playing Crystal Catcher, but the lingering thought loop is there is even bigger thrilling entertainment to be found in other games in the Push Gaming cabinet.