Piranha Pays

Piranha Pays: Slot Overview

Piranhas are native to river systems in parts of South America, where they can often be found lurking in murky water, ready to bust their pointy little teeth out to strip meat from the bones of animals unfortunate enough to cross their path. Interestingly, piranhas are actually omnivores as they also eat plant material. Huh. Their name is interesting too, coming from the indigenous Tupi people, and may possibly be a combination of pirá 'fish' and ánha 'cut', which apparently also meant 'bad' or 'devil' in Tupi-Gurani (thank you for the info, Wikipedia). Whichever way you cut it, piranhas aren't the sort of creatures you'd expect to see circling a fishbowl in someone's living room, right?

However, this is the premise of Play'n GO's online slot Piranha Pays, which begins by showing an adorable older gentleman entering a pet shop to buy a cute wee fish to take home to keep him company while he snoozes in his armchair. The base game is held in the man's living room decked out in chocky bikkies, a portrait on the wall, an old-school box TV set, and old-timey music playing in an old-school record player. If you've seen Carl Fredricksen and his house in the movie Up, you'll have a good idea of the vibe. It all adds up to a very charming environment, and theme is one of Piranha Pays' strong points.

The gaming grid is sometimes referred to as the fish tank, and behind the 5 reels, you can make out the water, toy castle, and a little Toonz-like character, providing a fun nod to Play'n GO's Reactoonz range of slots. In the base game, the grid has 4-rows of symbols and 30 paylines, but it is able to grow as high as 8-rows high in free spins via a levelling up system. Proving the point that cuteness in slots has nothing to do with their volatility, Piranha Pay's 10 out of 10 rating means this is about as volatile as it gets. Players are able to stake 10 c to $/€50 per spin and can theoretically expect a default RTP of 96.2%.

Food items such as biscuits, cakes, eggs on toast, pies, and slabs of meat are Piranha Pays' high pay symbols, awarding 6 to 20 times the bet for a 5-of-a-kind hit, while the low pays are J-A card royals, paying 1.6-2 times the bet for 5 OAK. The piranha symbol acts as the wild and one of the scatters. As the wild, the piranha can substitute for any regular pay symbol.

Piranha Pays: Slot Features

While the chap is snoozing in his chair, keep an eye out for Piranha Pays' win multiplier, mystery instant win, plus a free spins round with a scatter collect level-up system that can grow the game grid and the main piranha symbol.

Win Multiplier

A win multiplier may trigger on any spin, bringing up a multiplier of x2 to x10. The multiplier multiplies all line wins when it is active. The win multiplier is available in the base game and in free spins.

Mystery Instant Win

After free spins have nearly been triggered when there are scatters on reels 1 and 3, there is a random chance of getting a mystery instant win. The mystery instant win appears on the scatter on the third reel when activated. Mystery instant wins have values of 5x, 10x, 15x, or 20x the bet.

Free Spins

Landing 3 scatter symbols triggers 10 free spins, where there is a free spins trail. Progress along the trail occurs by landing scatter cans. Scatter cans may land on reels 1, 3, and 5. When 3 scatter cans have been collected, the round moves to the next level. When levelling up, the fish tank grows, increasing the grid size, the piranha grows, and +5 free spins are awarded.

• Level 1 – the piranha is 1x1, the fish tank grid is 5-reels, 5-rows, and 35 win lines.
• Level 2 – the piranha is 2x2, the fish tank grid is 5-reels, 6-rows, and 40 win lines.
• Level 3 – the piranha is 3x3, the fish tank grid is 5-reels, 7-rows, and 45 win lines.
• Level 4 – the piranha is 4x4, the fish tank grid is 5-reels, 8-rows, and 50 win lines.

During free spins, the piranha symbol remains on the screen for the full duration. It is wild and roams on every spin. Lastly, filling in the level 4 trail awards 5,000 times the bet.

Piranha Pays: Slot Verdict

Piranha Pays is a slot that is bursting with personality, which helps attract attention while triggering curiosity as to what else it might have going on. The set-up is great and makes for a creatively intriguing alternative use of fish instead of slapping the word 'bass' on everything for a change. Of course, Piranha Pays isn't a typical collect-money symbol fish slot either. It's actually closer to the 'Fat' slots Push Gaming has released or Print Studios' Royal Potato slots, in some ways.

The similarities are greater when free spins are active, as you might imagine. Then, it's a race to collect scatters as quickly as the game will allow to level up. As well as growing the roaming wild piranha, the game grid grows, which is kind of a double-edged sword. While it's nice to have additional room to land more pay symbols and extra paylines to link wins, you lose the chance of the roaming wild symbol really taking charge of the space. So, whereas the Jumbo symbol in Royal Potato or the bunny in Fat Rabbit can completely fill the screen, the expanding grid in Piranha Pays always gives the piranha wriggle room to manoeuvre. This method is fine, no major complaints as such, but it loses some of the spine-tingling thrill of seeing a central wild symbol grow to the point it really dominates a grid space.

Piranha Pays' particular way of doing things has not had a majorly detrimental effect on the stats, though. Max win is 5,000x the bet, and the probability of maximum exposure according to the game sheet is 1 in 50,629, which could be a typo, but if not, it is quite extraordinary. Whatever the case, Piranha Pays is able to pay when the going is good, but it might also be a tough nut to crack. To its credit, Piranha Pays lays out an absolutely charming scene for players to figure out whether luck is on their side, or not.