Quackers

Quackers Review

ELK Studios brings you to a lavish estate in Quackers, a charmingly quirky slot game that’s all about getting your ducks in a row. The pond takes center stage, filled with different water lilies and surrounded by manicured lawns and duck-shaped hedges. In the upper right corner, you’ll see a golden X with a corresponding golden duck emblem below, and this is where the game’s global multiplier is displayed. However, before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s take a look at the basics of this release.

Quackers plays out on a 6x6 grid with a cluster pays engine, meaning you win when matching symbols form clusters anywhere on the grid. Clusters connect vertically and/or horizontally and need to consist of between 5 and 20+ matching symbols to count as a win. Blooming water lilies of different colors are the premium symbols, awarding 0.4x to 1x your stake for 5 in a cluster and 75x to 200x your stake for 20+ in a cluster. The budding water lilies pay 0.1x to 0.2x for 5 in a cluster, while 20+ in a cluster pays between 30x and 40x your stake.

Quackers Reels Screen

Winning symbols are removed and replaced thanks to the avalanche mechanic, allowing winning streaks to go on as long as you keep winning. Wild symbols substitute for any pay symbol to help complete or improve winning clusters, and a winning cluster made of nothing but wilds pays the same as the highest-value red water lily. Up to 4 duck character symbols can appear in Quackers slot, and they deliver unique modifiers up to 3 times before being removed. These modifiers include increasing the global win multiplier, symbol transformations, and symbol multipliers.

Coin symbols are collected in a meter to eventually trigger a Coin Game bonus, which is a hold & win-style feature with cash prizes, collector symbols, and multipliers. The duck symbols are sticky in the bonus round, and all 4 are present from the first spin in the super bonus. Quackers is a medium-high volatility slot game, scoring 7 out of 10 on ELK’s scale. It offers a bet level range of £0.20 to £100 per spin, an RTP of 96% (RTP ranges), a hit rate of 29.7%, and a max win of 10,000x your stake.

Quackers Features

Below, you’ll learn all the details of this game’s features, and we also encourage you to check the Quackers free play demo, found at the top of this page. This way, you can sample the features for yourself and see how they work in practice. Let’s jump in!

Avalanche Mechanic

The Avalanche mechanic kicks in whenever you land at least one winning cluster on the grid, removing all winning symbols. The remaining symbols drop to their lowest possible position to fill the gaps before a new batch of symbols drops to fill the remaining gaps. If new winning clusters are created, this process repeats. This allows for indefinite winning streaks per round until you hit a non-winning Avalanche drop.

Duck Modifiers

You can land 4 different Duck characters on the grid, and they all come with unique modifiers. Duck symbols can land with up to 3 hearts in the base game, indicating how many times their modifier will trigger before the Duck is removed. Once the Duck is removed, a Wild symbol is left in its place, substituting for any pay symbol to help complete or improve cluster wins.

You can only land 1 of each kind of Duck symbol on the grid simultaneously, but all 4 Ducks can be present on the same spin. Ducks do not trigger their modifiers if a bonus round has been triggered, and here is an overview of the 4 Duck modifiers:

• Flying (Aviator) Duck - adds +1 to the global win multiplier that boosts all wins (resets to x1 for each new base game spin).
• Dynamite Duck - turns random pay symbols into Wild symbols.
• Princess Duck - upgrades a random pay symbol type to a higher-value pay symbol type. If the highest-value symbol type is chosen, the symbols are turned into Wild symbols.
• Marilyn Duck - upgrades random symbols with multipliers or increases existing symbol multipliers.

The Coin Game

Coin symbols are collected in the Coin Meter above the grid unless they are randomly discarded. This meter is saved between sessions if you play with the same bet level, and you need 20 collected Coins to fill the Coin Meter. This triggers the Coin Game, which is a bonus game that plays out on a 6x6-sized grid where each position spins to land blanks, random coin prizes, or treasure chests that collect all present coin prizes and other already used chests.

You can also land a Multiplier Increase symbol during The Coin Game, adding multipliers to the coin or chest symbols. If a coin or chest symbol already has a multiplier, the current multiplier is multiplied by the new multiplier. You start with 3 respins in the counter, and the counter resets each time you land at least one non-blank symbol. The Coin Game is over when you either run out of respins or fill the grid with symbols. Your total win is then summed up and awarded.

Quack Drops Bonus & Super Bonus Round

Landing 3 scatter symbols in view on the same base game spin or within the same avalanche sequence triggers the Quack Drops Bonus Round, awarding 5 free spins. This bonus round plays out on an 8x8 grid, reserving 4 top center positions for the duck symbols. These positions are marked by persistent swim tube symbols, and when ducks land, they remain in place for the duration of the bonus round.

Quackers Free Spins Win Screen

Unlike in the base game, there is no metered limit to how many times each duck may trigger their feature during bonus round spins. If you trigger the bonus round with 2 regular scatter symbols and 1 super scatter, you get the Super Quack Drops Bonus Round instead of the regular bonus round. The Super Bonus Round starts you off with all 4 ducks present, ready to unleash their modifiers from the very first super free spin.

Bonus Buy (not UK)

The X-iter bonus buy menu is available in certain regions, and it comes with the following 5 options in Quackers slot:

• Bonus Hunt - pay 2.5x your stake to boost your bonus round chances by more than 3 times.
• Mega Hunt - pay 5x your stake to boost your bonus round chances by more than 6 times.
• Two Ducks - pay 10x your stake to get at least 2 ducks on the spin that follows.
• Bonus Round - pay 100x your stake to trigger the Quack Drops bonus round.
• Super Bonus Round - pay 500x your stake to trigger the Super Quack Drops bonus round.

Theme & Graphics

Quackers takes you to an aristocratic duck pond, enclosed within a stone-paved garden and flanked by elaborate hedges sculpted into the shapes of various ducks that look similar to the duck characters you’ll meet in this game. Supposedly, this mansion is their home, and overall, the visual presentation of this cute animal-themed game is bright, polished, and mood-lifting. The main grid itself, set directly into the clear blue water of the pond, displays symbols consisting of budding and blooming water lilies of different colors. The 4 duck characters each come with a quirky and unique flair, adding charm and personality to the gaming experience.

Quackers Free Play

We suggest that you check out the free Quackers demo game, located at the top of this page, if you haven’t already. This is a reminder so you don’t forget to sample the game after reading our verdict below. This gives you a unique opportunity to get a feel for the ebb and flow of this game and, not least, to try all the features via the X-iter menu. At least all but the Coin Game, which requires patience to trigger. When you feel that you’ve made up your mind about playing this game for real, casinos carrying this title are found right below the Quackers free play demo.

Pros and Cons of Quackers

Our Verdict

It’s not like ELK has anything to prove with regard to delivering charming animal characters in their slot games, and with Quackers, they’ve gone right ahead and added 4 more to the mix. Fans of the Pirots series will probably appreciate these opulent, pool-partying waterfowls, and my personal favorite is the Marilyn duck blowing you a kiss while blinking seductively at you. The design is clean, bright, and clear, presenting a pleasant manicured garden scene for the unfolding cluster pays action.

The lightheartedness of the atmosphere is underscored by the thumping, rhythmic melody that accompanies your spins, and the pace of the game is excellent with the turbo switched on. You can play with regular speed if you want to savor each moment even more, but nothing is lost by speeding up the game a bit. The water lily symbols may be a tad monotonic for some, only distinguishable by color and their budding or blooming state. However, in practice, it works well to tell the low- from high-value symbols, and it helps those quirky duck characters shine even brighter when they appear.

The avalanche-fueled cluster pay base game churns along nicely, albeit without too much bravado unless you get help from the lively duck characters and their antics. The good news is that these ducks can fire off their modifiers up to 3 times when they land. However, you will most likely still need multiple different ducks present in the same round to truly make a dent. Things can escalate when the global win multiplier increases together with symbol multipliers. Add a few wild transformations to the mix too, and there might be enough spark to trigger an explosive win.

The regular bonus is very hit or miss since you never even know if those elusive ducks will show up at all within the limited 5-spin feature. Even if they do show, they might not strut their stuff and flap their wings all that much. This is the case with the super bonus too, of course, but at least there you have them all present from the get-go. The Coin Game is a loyalty bonus awarding your patience and feels a bit superfluous in this game. I would’ve preferred even more firepower reserved for the bonus rounds. That said, Quackers is well worth trying and a delightful addition to ELK’s catalog.