3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win

3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win: Slot Overview

Whilst more than capable of dropping bona fide doozies when it's in the mood, Hacksaw Gaming also increasingly has its sights set on the more mainstream sector of the gambling market. The subject of today's review is a prime example of its attempt to capture low-hanging fruit. The slot is 3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win, and it is a porcine and riches reskin of the pirate-themed 3 Cursed Chests, released a few months ago. The similarities between the two games are nigh on identical outside the audio and optics, so brace for another bout of Wild Respins, Coins, and FS Respins, triggered by Hammer symbols linked to specific collection pots.

The original might not have garnered a high score, but it at least tried to look ghostly and swashbuckling while acting mediocre. 3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win, by contrast, offers little to nothing in the way of eye-blasting visuals. The base game screen is made up of piles of coins, sitting around a game show-type place, three piggies above a metallic gold-lined play area, and that's about it. Piggy characters wander from side to side across the screen, adding a modicum of charm, while minor hue changes and extra piles of dollar bills indicate that you're in one of the bonus modes. Unless happy-go-lucky pigs and mounds of on-screen loot are of major personal interest, 3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win's skin comes across as even less thrilling than the pirate slot it was copied from.

3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win rotates through various bonus phases, triggered by the three Piggy Banks, but at all times it is played on a 5x3 gaming area, with 17 paylines. The stats have stayed the same, meaning a medium volatile math model, and a range of RTPs topped by a 96.3% value. The stake selection is wide, too, offering a minimum bet of $/€0.05 up to a maximum of $/€400.

A classic set of symbols makes up the regular pays on the paytable. They are 10-A card ranks, cherries, lemons, plums, horseshoes, and diamonds. Landing a line of 5 matching royals is worth 1.2x, or a line of 5 matching premium symbols pays 4x-8x the stake. Wilds are preset on all reels where they substitute all regular symbols and award 8x if five wilds create a winning line.

3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win: Slot Features

Pink, Gold, and Purple Piggy Banks sit outside the reels. When Pink, Gold, and Purple Lucky Hammer symbols land, they charge their corresponding Piggy Banks. When this occurs, there is a chance a Piggy Bank activates at the end of the spin. One Piggy Bank can trigger per spin.

• When a Pink Piggy Bank is activated, a Magic Wild Respin takes place where regular pay symbols, wilds or wild multipliers with values of x2-x100 land. Wild multipliers multiply the wins they are in, and multiple multipliers in the same win are added together.
• When a Gold Piggy Bank is activated, the Magic Coins Bonus is triggered, with three free spins landing Coins and blank symbols. Coins have values of 0.2x-1,000x, are sticky and reset the spin count. The bonus ends when spins run out, or all positions are filled.
• Activating the Purple Piggy Bank triggers a Magic FS Respin where only FS and dead symbols land. Landing 7 FS symbols awards the Swindle and Swine bonus round, or landing 6 FS and 1 FS Upgrade symbol awards the Epig Heist bonus. The number of free spins awarded equals the number of FS symbols that landed.

Swindle and Swine

This bonus keeps the base game mechanics. Plus, when the third Lucky Hammer of the same colour lands, the corresponding Piggy Bank is guaranteed to activate. However, if a Piggy Bank activates randomly before the third symbol lands, the count resets. When activated, the Magic Coins Bonus counts as one free spin. The number of FS symbols that land during a Magic FS Respin determines the number of extra free spins awarded, from 2 to 10. If an FS Upgrade hits, the round upgrades to the Epig Heist, carrying over the new and existing number of free spins.

Epig Heist

This bonus also keeps the base game mechanics, except when a Lucky Hammer hits, it activates its corresponding Piggy Bank on the spin. Magic Coins and Magic FS Respins function as in Swindle and Swine.

Feature Buys

Magic FS FeatureSpins cost 3x to give each spin a higher chance of landing a Purple Lucky Hammer, and are 5 times more likely to trigger the Magic FS Respin. Piggy Bank FeatureSpins cost 40x to guarantee all 3 Lucky Hammer symbols land and 1 Piggy Bank triggers. The Swindle and Swine bonus can be bought for 90x or Epig Heist for 200x the stake.

3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win: Slot Verdict

3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win is the sort of slot that sets its sights on mediocrity and powers towards it with zero hesitation. Hacksaw Gaming has produced loads of memorable and mechanically innovative releases over the years, but this one boils down to a quick reskin rather than any sort of meaningful addition to the portfolio. The similarities to 3 Cursed Chests are impossible to overlook, with the same structure, features, and mathematical profile on offer from a game which failed to excite the first time round, simply dressed up in a cheerful if unimaginative cash piggy theme.

On the gaming side, nothing has changed, so if you liked what 3 Cursed Chests had to offer, then 3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win should blow your hair back as well, and vice versa. Winning potential remains a relatively low 2,500x the bet, and the tools to attempt getting there are unaltered. There is some variety, which is a positive attribute in a three-pot slot, ranging from respins with large possible multiplier values, a Magic Coin hold 'n' win, and free spins that can increase the frequency that pot features trigger. It's not tough to imagine some gamblers being on board with this sort of thing, maybe even more so than 3 Cursed Chest on account of the familiarity provided by the rich piggy graphical approach.

And yet, 3 Magic Piggy Banks Hold & Win was a functional rather than fascinating slot that felt like a step down from its predecessor on account of the saturated theme choice. For some gamblers, what's here might be exactly what they are looking for, but for anyone else, the lack of originality and underwhelming visual design make it difficult to recommend over the more inventive alternatives in Hacksaw Gaming's collection.