Penguin Royale

Penguin Royale Review

NowNow Gaming’s Penguin Royale takes you to the permafrost of the South Pole, a snow-covered kingdom ruled by a massive, well-fed penguin. This crowned creature stands to the right of the reels, wielding a massive fishing hook as its scepter and sporting a red cape for the occasion. If you look closely, you’ll see crystallized snowflakes falling to the ground. Keep the sound on if you want action commentary from the royal penguin as you play, and don’t forget to pour yourself a warm cuppa for the occasion.

As usual, you start by choosing your bet level, which ranges from €0.10 to €100 per spin in the Penguin Royale slot. The interface should be familiar to any Hacksaw fans, as South African partner NowNow uses the exact same layout and UI framework. The game plays out on a 5x4 grid with 1,024 win ways, and you win by landing matching symbols anywhere on at least 3 adjacent reels, starting from the leftmost reel. The premium fruit symbols consist of grapes, lemons, oranges, watermelons, and 7s, awarding 1.2x to 5x your stake for 5 of a kind. The casino chip low-value symbols pay 0.5x to 1x your stake for the same.

Winning symbols are removed and replaced thanks to the cascading mechanic, leading to winning streaks that continue as long as you keep winning. The king’s crown Wild symbol substitutes for any pay symbol to help complete or improve wins. However, Wild symbols do not appear organically in Penguin Royale. Instead, they are created when frozen pay symbols are part of a win. These appear on reels 2, 3, and 4 only, and the win breaks the ice and turns the symbol or symbols wild for the next cascade.

Penguin Royale Slot Reels Screen

The multiplier meter is active in all stages of the game, with upcoming multipliers being added to the Awarding Multiplier per cascade. These can reach as high as x100, and you are guaranteed a reel full of frozen symbols in the bonus round. Penguin Royale is a high volatility game, scoring 4 out of 5 on NowNow Gaming’s scale. The max win is 10,000x your stake, the hit rate is 24.55%, and the possible RTP settings are 96.31% and 94.26%.

Penguin Royale Features

We have provided an overview of this game already, and the time has come to delve deeper into the features and mechanics. To see these in action yourself, you can check the Penguin Royale free play demo at the top of this page. Let’s check it all out!

Cascading Reels

Winning symbols are removed from the grid, causing existing and new symbols to drop down to fill the gaps. This process repeats for as long as you keep winning, allowing for indefinite winning streaks in all stages of the game.

Break the Ice

Each symbol has a frozen version of itself, and these land inside an ice cube. When frozen symbols are part of a winning combination, the ice breaks, but the symbol is not removed from the grid like regular symbols. Instead, the symbol that used to be frozen turns into a Wild symbol for the cascade that follows. Only pay symbols can land as frozen symbols, and these appear on the 3 middle reels.

Multiplier Meter

The Multiplier Meter is located at the top of the grid, but only the leftmost multiplier will boost wins. The 3 other multipliers are upcoming multipliers. The leftmost Awarding Multiplier starts at x1 for each spin, and the leftmost upcoming multiplier is added to it for each cascade. The upcoming multipliers are random and range from x1 to x100. After the leftmost upcoming multiplier is added to the Awarding Multiplier, the 2 other upcoming multipliers shift left, and a new multiplier is added to the rightmost position in the meter. The multiplier meter resets for each new round.

The Blizzard Bonus Round

The Blizzard Bonus Round triggers when you land 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols on the same spin or in the same cascading sequence. This awards 10, 12, or 14 free spins, respectively. A random reel is chosen from the 3 middle reels per free spin, and this chosen reel will land only frozen symbols both on the initial spin and subsequent cascades.

Frozen symbols can also appear on the two remaining middle reels. The multiplier meter works the same way as in the base game, and you win 10 additional free spins if you land 3 scatters on the same free spin or within the same cascading sequence. You also get +1 free spin on top of that for each additional scatter above the minimum of 3.

Penguin Royale Slot Reels Screen

Feature & Bonus Buy (not UK)

The Feature and Bonus Buy menu is available in certain regions, and it offers the following options in the Penguin Royale slot:

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins - pay 3x your stake to increase your bonus round chances by 3 times.
• Break the Ice FeatureSpins - pay 50x your stake to be guaranteed frozen symbols on one of the three middle reels. Also, the win multiplier may start anywhere from x1 to x100.
• The Blizzard Bonus Round - pay 100x your stake to trigger the bonus round.

Theme & Graphics

Penguin Royale plays out in a snow-covered winter world, most likely somewhere close to the South Pole. It’s therefore a bit incongruent that you’ll see green trees in the backdrop, in addition to a jagged, ice-capped mountain. The crowned king penguin character stands next to the grid, holding what looks like a massive fishing hook. He uses it to scratch his back, and this royal penguin provides action commentary throughout the gaming session. The symbols are a mix of frozen casino chips and fruit, and the soundtrack is a soothing melody that’s pleasing despite being repetitive.

Penguin Royale Free Play

We recommend that you test the free Penguin Royale demo game, which you will find if you head to the top of this review page. Reading about a game will only give you half the impression, as you need firsthand experience to truly know if this is for you. You can also take advantage of the bonus buy menu and see how the features and the bonus round play out. This is how you prepare yourself for the real deal, and don’t forget to leave a comment once your Penguin Royale free play session is over.

Pros and Cons of Penguin Royale

Our Verdict

NowNow Gaming has delivered a charming little slot game with Penguin Royale, although the constant stream of oh-oh’s from the penguin character got on my nerves after a while. Action commentary is fine and all, but it’s better to save it for when something actually happens. The soundtrack is almost like a lullaby in this game, and you may feel your eyes getting heavy in the base game grind. The crisp execution and smooth animations go a long way, though, making a solid first impression.

In a way, it feels like these Hacksaw partner studios are afraid of outshining their master, and it’s almost like they are holding back a bit to avoid that. The base game in Penguin Royale could’ve easily been better with a lot more frozen symbols action. Why not allow these symbols to appear on all reels, for example, and make them land in stacks instead of single instances like you get most of the time? You don’t see all that many frozen symbols overall, at least in my experience.

A bit more creativity in the symbols department would’ve been nice too, as the mix of casino chips and fruit symbols is hardly groundbreaking. It’s not really congruent with the theme of this game either. The win multiplier system is a bit more innovative, with the randomness factor allowing for unpredictable outcomes. This is in harmony with Hacksaw’s ethos of potentially massive multiplier-boosted wins being possible in all stages of the game.

The frozen symbols mechanic comes into its own in the bonus round, where at least one reel is frozen per free spin. However, this is not quite enough to make a dent many times, and you still need a win to turn the symbols wild. Penguin Royale is not a game of the year candidate, but it’s a pretty decent effort if you’re into multiplier-chasing action with wild transformations. The 10,000x max win is not too shabby either, but we’re unsure if there is enough here to make significant waves.