Culinary Clash

Culinary Clash Review

Culinary Clash is an upcoming online slot by Bullshark Games scheduled for the second half of June. It's another game based on cluster wins, but this time, it's packed with some awesome Progressive Multiplier symbols, wild transformations, and free spins. If you are ready for a tour of the most exquisite virtual restaurants, follow me!

Bullshark Games is a skilled partner to one of the hottest iGaming providers at the time, Hacksaw Gaming. Seasoned gamblers will find many similarities in the slots' designs, technical features, and even bonuses of the two companies. Bullshark Games uses Hacksaw’s resources via the OpenRGS program.

The company may have only 18 slots in its repertoire so far, but it has shown the audience ability to build Cluster Pays slots. Age of Seth is the most recent example, but Culinary Clash has a larger grid - 7x7, although the other technical parameters are almost identical. Players need to connect at least 5 symbols of a kind to get paid. The slot also offers cascading reels, symbols with multipliers, random wilds, and a couple of bonus minigames.

Maybe you remember mega-hits like Jammin' Jars or perhaps Propaganda with roaming wilds that build up progressive multipliers. Well, the case here is slightly different, and I'll provide more details later in this review. Culinary Clash is packed with advanced Autoplay, Turbo, and Super Turbo features, and several other tools, including Bonus Bet and Bonus Buys.

Culinary Clash Slot - Game Screen

Culinary Clash is all about the food, as the name implies, and you'll find plenty of delicacies on the reels. There are 11 payout tiers from 5 to 36+ connected symbols. Burgers pay the most - 0.50x to 500x, followed by Donuts, Pizzas, and Fries with top prizes of 250x, 210x, and 200x the bet, respectively. The low-valued symbols land as strawberries, carrots, apples, and eggplants, paying between 0.10x and 70x the stake.

The regular wild symbol substitutes for all foods in the paytable and pays 500x the bet if you manage to connect at least 40 of it. These numbers are hard to get, so set your target in the lower payout tiers. The betting range is wide enough to satisfy most gamblers out there - €0.10 up to €100 per spin.

The Culinary Clash RTP ranges, and according to the provider's memo, there are two versions with different rates - 96.29% and 94.35%. The Hit Frequency coefficients remain similar - 33.66% and 33.55%, as well as the levels of volatility - high (4/5). The max win is juicy - 10,000x the bet or up to €1,000,000!

Culinary Clash Features

Culinary Clash has a truly amazing base gameplay but also features a couple of Free Spins minigames. The best part is that you can win the max multiplier in all stages! You can also boost your chances of getting the bonus or directly buy it. Read the following lines carefully to decide what would be the most suitable way to proceed for you!

Symbols with Multipliers

First, only high-valued symbols can generate multipliers, and that happens after cascades with winning clusters. The participating symbols are removed, and before new ones come from above, a symbol with a multiplier is placed on one of the empty spots. It's the same as the symbol type that has formed the cluster and has a multiplier equal to the number of symbols that have participated in it.

If a symbol with a progressive multiplier is involved in another winning cluster, it will apply that multiplier. Moreover, it is progressive and will continue to grow exponentially. If two or more symbols with multipliers participate in the same cluster, only one new symbol will be added to a random empty spot. Symbols with multipliers can also drop during the spin, and their values can be x5, x10, x15, x20, or x25.

Tomato Wild

Tomato Wild acts as a regular wild, but if you spot one or many, you will witness an intriguing feature. Each Tomato Wild will choose one low-valued symbol and will transform its instances in view in regular Burger Wilds. If any of these substitution symbols participate in a high-valued win, each will be counted as +1 to the multiplier.

Wild Feast Bonus

Wild Feast is a Free Spins bonus, and you will need 3 or 4 scatters at the same time to trigger it. They will award 8 and 10 free spins, respectively, while each scatter during the bonus will add 1 extra free spins. In Wild Feast, all symbols with multipliers become persistent and move on random positions on every new spin. Therefore, the respective multipliers can reach truly gigantic values.

Kitchen Chaos Bonus

Kitchen Chaos is another Free Spins bonus, but you will need 5 scatters in view to activate it. In return, you will get 12 free spins and an extra one for each newly spotted scatter during the feature. All rules of Wild Feast remain valid here as well, and at least 4 symbols with multipliers are guaranteed to land on the reels on the first free spin.

Culinary Clash Slot – Free Spins Gameplay Screen

Buy Bonus Panel

Buy Bonus and Bonus Bet are standard for Hacksaw Gaming slots, and since Bullshark Games uses their resources, we can find them here, too. The panel is available via a blue tab on the lower left side of the toolbar beneath the grid. Each option comes with a price as listed below:

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins - 3x the bet - 5x the chance to trigger a Free Spins bonus (96.38%)
• Flavour Frenzy FeatureSpins - 50x the bet - get at least 3 symbols with multipliers and at least 1 Tomato Wild (96.35%)
• Wild Feast - 100x the bet - get 3 or 4 scatters on the following spin (96.32%)
• Kitchen Chaos - 250x the bet - get 5 scatters on the following spin(96.24%)

Theme & Graphics

Bullshark Games promises a "Tasty Battle" in Culinary Clash between the Healthy Food and Junk Food. At first glance, the junk prevails as you will really want those burgers, donuts, french fries, and pizza slices in enough quantities on the reels. The healthy fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, are in the low-valued part of the paytable.

However, the mighty Tomato comes out of nowhere to bring more junk to the table, converting low symbols in his beloved Burger Wilds. The script is solid, and the presentation is marvelous. I can also highlight the premium-class graphics and animations, as well as the nice audio effects. Culinary Clash is 100% compatible with desktop and mobile devices, browsers, and operating systems.

Pros And Cons Of Culinary Clash Slot

Our Verdict

Culinary Clash makes a strong first impression with a large grid and Cluster Pays mechanics. Bullshark Games has a strong record of building solid slots of that type, with Age of Seth, being already mentioned. But that's far from all, and we all appreciated Piggy Cluster Hunt in 2024 with medium volatility and a 15,000x max win. The game presented a progressive win multiplier, exploding wilds, and a powerful Free Spins bonus.

Three months later, the provider came out with Junkyard Kings with similar volatility and RTP and a winning potential of 12,000x. The feature set includes increasing cell multipliers, permanent doubling wilds, walking wilds, and a Free Spins minigame with all that and more. In October, Bullshark released Amazing Miceketeers packed with sticky walking wilds, Symbol Converter, Symbol Upgrader, and free spins.

The provider follows Hacksaw's example and does not repeat a feature set in its slots. It may use the same layout, volatility, payout rate, and maximum win caps, but it never offers an identical selection of modifiers. Perhaps that makes Culinary Clash even more intriguing, and I'm confident that we'll soon see heavy traffic towards the game. My final verdict is positive because of the smooth gameplay and juicy win potential.