Beware of Bear

Beware of Bear: Slot Overview

Camping is all about leaving city life behind to slow down, live more simply, and get closer to nature. Dropping the modern comforts can amplify even the smallest annoyance, though, say losing the can opener, struggling to start a fire, and the challenges that adverse weather can bring. Whilst inconvenient, those issues pale in comparison to being terrorised by dangerous wildlife, which is the situation the couple in developer Thunderkick's Beware the Bear find themselves in. In this online slot, their grumpy clawed neighbour is none too happy to have visitors in its patch of the woods, and gets to swiping, which is good for gamblers who can benefit from full reel wild respins and a progressive multiplier system during free spins.

Beware of Bear starts off peacefully, as players open the game to a tranquil lakeside scene. A fire crackles next to a tent, the stars are out, and a banjo plays gentle tunes as the couple in the story get to enjoy nature at night. Look to the bottom left-hand corner, though, where a bunch of Zs indicate the sleeping state of the neighbouring bear. There it rests until poked, and its claws come out to do a bit of swiping. Thunderkick has used a cartoonish art style to give Beware of Bear a pleasing atmosphere that's peaceful a lot of the time, though slashed through now and then with moments of animalistic violence.

Given Thunderkick's past history with 6x4 slots, you'd be forgiven for thinking Beware of Bear is a ways-to-win game, but instead, it makes do with just 20 paylines. The math model produces an RTP of 94.29% and is highly volatile. As well as ante bets and a feature buy, gamblers may choose a stake of $/€0.10 to $/€100.

The hierarchy of pay symbols is made up of boxes of matches, hatchets, cans, torches, mobile devices, compasses, radios, cameras, backpacks and two character symbols. Payouts are 10x the bet when landing 6 matching characters, or 1.5x to 5x the bet for the remaining pay symbols. Regular wilds and Beehive Wilds substitute all regular pay symbols and are worth up to 10x for 6 of them in a win.

Beware of Bear: Slot Features

Packed in the backpack is a Wild Swipe feature, a free spins bonus round with an anger meter, Bet+ options and a feature buy.

Wild Swipe

This feature can trigger in the base and bonus game. Beehive Wilds expand into full wild reels. If a win does not occur, the non-wild reels respin, while the wild reel remains in place. The game swipes one additional reel at a time at random, and respins repeat until a win occurs. Swiping an already wild reel increases the reel's multiplier by 1 in the base game. Reel multipliers apply to payline wins that include the multiplier reel. Multipliers are added together when more than one is in the same win.

Bonus Round

When the bonus meter in the main game reaches 3 scatters, 10 free spins are awarded. The meter persists through respins. In the bonus, the Wild Swipe feature works as in the base game, but each swipe increases an anger meter. Every four steps upgrades the anger meter from x2 to x3 to x5, and awards +3 free spins. If a swipe hits an already wild reel, the reel's multiplier increases according to the current anger level.

Bet+ & Feature Buy

There are four Bet+ options. They are the Bonus Boost at 1.4x to make each spin 2 times more likely to trigger a bonus game, the Bonus Boost Plus at 2.4x to make it 5 times more likely and the Bonus Boost Ultra at 4.2x to make it 10 times more likely. Poke the Bear costs 15x to guarantee 1 Beehive symbol on the initial spin. The sole bonus buy is 100x to buy the free spins round.

Beware of Bear: Slot Verdict

Funny to think that while we're busy shaping the planet according to our whims and will, situations can still arise where we humans are not the apex predator. In Beware of Bear, Thunderkick turns a peaceful camping trip into a lesson in respecting the local wildlife, with a grumpy bear providing thematic tension and a series of wild-fuelled features generating the on-grid action. The cartoonish presentation and gentle banjo soundtrack set up an appealing naturalistic setting, before the bear's outbursts bring chaos to the campsite.

On the technical side, it's Beehive Wilds you want to see fall from the trees onto the grid, in order to move Beware of Bear up a gear and create full reel wilds. Then if no win occurs, the game goes into Wild Swipe mode. What makes this phase special is that wild reels stick around until a win occurs. At no point does a wild reel go to waste, whether the win it produces is big or small. Or medium, since non-wild reels respin, creating new wild reels, or adding to existing ones. Like Flip the Bird: Max Chaos, which was recently reviewed, Beware of Bear is another slot where you want to win, but not too soon, since prolonging the respins sequence can add extra wild reels and unlock multipliers. Free spins don't exactly flip the script, but they do add a progression system which can increase the minimum multiplier value added to preexisting wild reels that get swiped again.

Part of Beware of Bear's appeal and suspense is the way it makes patience part of the game. Getting a quick win is fine, but keeping respins alive long enough to add wild reels and build multipliers is where it gets interesting. The wide spectrum of results can include tiddler hits even when multiple wild reels are in place, up to a maximum cap of 10,000x the bet. The key is keeping the Wild Swipe respins going long enough to stack wild reels and build multipliers, rather than simply landing a quick win. Do that and Beware of Bear might be a pretty fun game; fail, and it could be a short camping trip.