Pug Life

Pug Life: Slot Overview

Software provider Hacksaw Gaming flips the personality switch, shifting the team from Mr Hyde to Dr Jekyll mode in Pug Life, an online slot which presents a sunny side of domesticity in a game populated with all manner of pets and animals. This being a Hacksaw Gaming production, don't expect it to be all cuddles and purrs, though. Pug Life is, at heart, a serious gambling machine decked out in numerous features and possible betting options, with a healthy max win on top. If you're tooling around for a cute animal-centric slot with a bit of bite, let's see if Pug Life pulls its elements together or scatters them like a dropped box of kibble.

Pug Life's first impression triggered memories of Pragmatic Play's The Dog House, which is more or less the gold standard when it comes to pet-themed games. It's got bags of that brightly lit urban environment full of wide-eyed critters getting up to all sorts of rib-tickling mischief or just chilling out looking pattable thing going on. Unlike The Dog House, however, Pug Life spends its base game indoors, shifting to the kitchen for Treat Yo'self free spins before heading into the backyard for The Dawg's Den round. If homespun adorability is high on your wish list, Pug Life serves this up in spades.

It also serves up medium volatile gaming (could be high, depending on the feature buy options), with a default return to player value of 96.33% when playing normally - though the value can change when buying features or Featurespins. Regular bets vary from 10 p/c to $/€100 per paid game round, with the Pug Life experience available on desktop, mobile, or tablet devices.

Taking centre stage is a 5-reel, 4-row game panel utilising 16 fixed paylines. Regular wins happen when matching symbols hit along a payline, starting from the first reel over consecutive reels. First on the list are 10-A card icons as the low pays, worth 1-2x the bet for five-of-a-kind, then mice, birds, cats, and two doggies as the five high pay symbols, awarding 4-10 times the stake for five-of-a-kind. Treat symbols are wild, landing anywhere to substitute for any normal pay symbols. Should five Treats land along a line, they are worth 10x the bet.

Pug Life: Slot Features

Treat symbols are not only wild; they also bring multipliers with them when they land. There are three kinds – Biscuit, Bone, and Steak. All winning combinations that contain a Treat are boosted by the Treat's revealed multiplier. Biscuits can have x2, x3, or x4, Bones can have x5, x10, x15, or x20, while Steaks can have x25, x50, x75, x100, x150, or x200. If more than one Treat is used in a win, the multiplier values are added first before they are applied to the win.

Treat Yo'self

In addition, if 3 Treats land anywhere in view in the base game, the Treat Yo'self bonus round is triggered. The triggering Treat symbols are locked and carry over to the bonus round. During this feature, Treats are sticky and reveal a multiplier on each spin depending on their type. A total of 5 free spins are initially awarded, but each Treat that lands awards +1 extra free spin.

The Dawg's Den

Another symbol to cover is the Dawg's Den scatter. Hitting 3 or more of them triggers The Dawg's Den feature. These scatters reveal either a 3 or a 4, and the total number equates to the number of free spins bestowed. In this feature, no wins are awarded until the end. Instead, the value of all winning combinations is stored at the top of the reels, along with the sum of any landed Treat multipliers. When spins end, the total win is multiplied by the total multiplier and awarded. One more symbol to be aware of is the sticky Toaster which appears on reels 4 or 5 in this feature. Toasters lock in place until the round ends and act as wilds. They also reveal a monetary amount or a multiplier which is added to the running totals. Toaster multipliers can have multipliers of x2, x3, x4, x5, x10, x15, x20, x25, x50, or x100, or monetary values of 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50, or 100 times the bet. On a final note, landing extra Dawg's Den symbols awards a random number of extra free spins.

Buy Bonus

Where available, clicking the Buy Bonus button presents players with these four options:

• Treats Featurespins – 2x the bet for a spin which guarantees at least one Treat. Highly volatile with a max RTP of 96.25%.
• Bonus Featurespins – 3x the bet for five times the chance of triggering any of the bonus rounds. Highly volatile with a max RTP of 96.3%.
• Treat Yo'self – 100x the bet. Medium volatile with a max RTP of 96.27%.
• The Dawg's Den – 200x the bet. Medium volatile with a max RTP of 96.29%.

Pug Life: Slot Verdict

If you're used to dodging deities in the underworld or battling gladiators in an arena, or philosophising over the meaning of time in previous Hacksaw Gaming slots, then Pug Life might come as a bit of a shock. Then again, players who have been following Hacksaw Gaming's development should be used to 'lighter-hearted' theme's like this, as for a while, the studio was mainly associated with feel-good titles like Om Nom or Stick 'Em. It still does the adorable shtick, as evidenced by Pug Life, which is about as cute a slot as they get from Hacksaw Gaming, running rampant as it does with cats, dogs, and various other critters.

Pug Life also exhibits Hacksaw Gaming's interest in multiplier features/modifiers. Here they are injected by the three Treat symbols or the Toaster and can be quite sizable. Especially when more than one Treat appears in a win, thereby adding their values together first. The bonus rounds have a sticky wild aspect similar to The Dog House, though technically with greater potential values, while The Dawg's Den bonus brought back memories of NetEnt's slot Cornelius, not that they are especially similar in style. Pug Life has sharper claws than NetEnt's cat game and greater winning potential, too, maxing out at 7,500x the bet. Pug Life has the ability to flip when the right multiplier appears - a classic Hacksaw Gaming move. During testing, The Dawg's Den could start low-key but steadily add to the prize pot and multiplier until something decent was built by the end. Not always, of course, but the abundance of cuteness and what might appear to be an initial slow pace did warm up as the game's abilities became more apparent.

The leap from Undead Fortune (the previous Hacksaw Gaming slot we'd reviewed) to Pug Life was rather jarring, and it took a while to settle into a neutral state to get a non-biased feel for it. In the end, a satisfying time was had. It doesn't blast onto your eyes like Hand of Anubis or capture the imagination like Wanted Dead or a Wild, but after adding everything up, Pug Life contains a number of positive aspects for animal lovers to sink their teeth into.