Grug Make Fire

Grug Make Fire: Slot Overview

We'll never know who lit history's first metaphorical match, but the taming of fire turned out to be an absolute game-changer for us homo sapiens. No longer was half the day taken up chewing through tough, raw meat and fibrous plants. It's said that by acting as an external stomach which pre-digested food, fire helped unlock a massive surplus of calories that shrank our digestive tracts and fuelled the evolution of the modern human brain. The star of this Hacksaw Gaming show, Grug Make Fire, might have fire, but he hasn't evolved the grey matter to Einsteinian levels yet. He's still obsessed with clubbing things and grilling meat on this new hot, flickering stuff. For gamblers, they'll want to see as much cooking going on as possible, as it may lead to wilds and wild multiplier transformations on the reels.

Grug is the beefy caveman standing to the left of the screen who looks like he is personally offended by evolution and is stuck in a state of permanent fury. Guess you had to be tough to survive back in those days; comforts hadn't been invented yet. Grug surveys a scene of cartoon prehistoric wonder rendered in a style that is all chunky stone textures, sharp comic-book outlines, and dinosaurs making theatrical expressions. Grug Make Fire saves its biggest villain for the upper bonus round, a menacing T-rex who looks a bit like the horned Alpha Tyrannosaurus from Genndy Tartakovsky's animated series Primal. A bit scary, but it also brought to mind Ice Age's Momma T-rex, so maybe they all just seem the same when humans are busy scurrying away in fear.

Grug Make Fire is played on a 5x4 gaming area with 14 paylines for landing wins along. It burns with a math model rated 4 out of 5 in terms of volatility and possesses an RTP of 96.19%, though lower variants are available. Bets as low as $/€0.10 up to a high of $/€100 per spin may be placed.

Grug's symbols are 10-A royals as the low pays, then five dino characters as the high pays. A low pay 5 OAK combination awards 1x the bet, while a 5 OAK high pay hit awards 2.5x to 10x the stake. Wilds of all types replace any paying symbol and award 10x when five of them create a win line.

Grug Make Fire: Slot Features

The game strikes sparks with its Burning Wild symbols, available in the base game and its two bonus rounds - Grug Find Food and Grug Fight Dino. In addition, four features are available from the feature buy section.

Burning Wild Symbols

When a Burning Wild symbol lands, it activates by burning all pay symbols and scatters on the reel above from where it landed. Burnt low pay symbols transform into wilds. When high pay symbols are burnt, they transform into Burnt Wild Multipliers with a value of x2 to x200. When a Burnt Wild Multiplier is part of a win, its multiplier is applied to all wins connected to it.

Scatters

When 3 or more scatters land, they each display a value of 2-5. The number of free spins awarded equals the total number displayed on the triggering scatters. When scatters are burned, they can display a value of 3-6.

Grug Find Food

Landing 3 scatters triggers Grug Find Food and 6-18 free spins. This round keeps the base game mechanics with an increased chance of landing Burning Wild symbols. In this feature, landing a scatter symbol awards 1-3 extra spins, and a burnt scatter awards 2-4 spins.

Grug Fight Dino

Grug Fight Dino is activated by landing 4 scatters, resulting in 8-24 free spins. As well as the mechanics from Grug Find Food, a Wildlife Bar is added outside the grid. The Bar contains levels and is progressive throughout the round. The Bar reaches a new level when a certain number of winning symbols have been awarded, and each level awards a certain number of Burnt Reels. When a new level is reached, the Bar resets. The round starts at level 0.

• 12 winning symbols are required to reach Level 1, which awards 1 Burnt Reel.
• 46 winning symbols are required to reach Level 2, which awards 2 Burnt Reels.
• 96 winning symbols are required to reach Level 3, which awards 3 Burnt Reels.
• 150 winning symbols are required to reach Level 4, which awards 4-5 Burnt Reels.

The Wildlife Bar remains at Level 4 for the rest of the feature once reached. Burnt Reels burn pay symbols and scatters on the reel, transforming them as in the base game. When a Burnt Wild Multiplier burns twice, its existing multiplier is multiplied by x3. If a burnt scatter burns twice, its free spin value increases to a higher value of 3-5. Burnt Reels can only burn once per spin. Landing a scatter awards an extra 1-5 free spins.

Feature Buys

Grug Make Fire has four feature buys available for players. They are the BonusHunt FeatureSpins, making each spin 10 times more likely to trigger a bonus for 5x or Grug Play FeatureSpins costing 50x for a spin, guaranteeing at least 1 Burning Wild. Both bonus rounds can be bought. Grug Find Food costs 100x or Grug Fight Dino for 200x the bet.

Grug Make Fire: Slot Verdict

Hacksaw Gaming has certainly shown a strong interest in spreading wilds and multipliers across its games' reels, but rarely, if ever, in this exact manner. Like a kid who just figured out how matches work, Grug Make Fire is obsessed with sparking a light and fanning flames across its own grid. And, while the beefy, permanently furious protagonist might look like he has been left behind by evolution, the game's mechanics are anything but primitive. In the grand scheme of slot things, the features are nothing overly special, but paired with the fire-burning delivery system and the boost they receive in free spins, means it shouldn't take much to persuade pyro-leaning players to jump on board.

As for the review, there was a world of difference between Grug Fight Dino and the rest of the game combined. Not saying positive things can't happen in the base game or Grug Find Food, and to be fair, multiplier values are able to be very high, up to x200, so any phase can potentially pop - an impression reinforced by the fact the 10,000x win cap is doable in any mode. But it was during Grug Fight Dino that the game really came alive, aided by the Wild Life Bar, which can turn everything around in a good way when collection is going well, and the resulting Burnt Reels are like throwing an extra canister of petrol on the bonfire, to you know, stoke it a bit. Key to look out for there is the burn on burn action tripling Burnt Wild Multipliers in one swoop.

Some may find Hacksaw Gaming reaching into its wild reel multiplier bag of tricks again tiresome, but Grug Make Fire does some genuinely exciting stuff with them. More so in the latter bonus round, but the game's theme, its presentation, and the dramatic way wilds and multipliers behave on the reels make it an entertaining prehistoric romp.