Theme of the Game
Frog Grog is a froggy slot which seems to be Thunderkick’s trump for Halloween. Frog Grog actually stands for the potion that you will be brewing during your play in what seems a witch’s cabin with all the vials of suspicious potions, chests of drawers, skulls, candles and book of spells.
The mysterious and somewhat spooky music also adds to the eerie feel, especially when you notice a set of glowing eyes watching you from the dark corner. As always Thunderkick excels at the imaginative animation and crystal clear graphics and create yet another sharp-looking pokie.
As for the game play, they seem to be insisting on developing slots without Free Spins features or typical bonus rounds. This time, you will have the help of Wild Frogs, Multipliers and Mystery Games instead. Can they fill in for the lack of Free Spins? Let’s find out.
Developer
Thunderkick is masters of developing original and premium quality slots, so even though they have been around for only four years, they are already well-known for their uncommon approach to slots.
Latest releases, including Frog Grog show that they base their slots on basic game functionality and most importantly, they are trying to avoid Free Spins and special bonus features. While the courage and the creativity are definitely praise-worthy, the main question is whether this contributes to the popularity of their slots.
How to Play It
Frog Grog comes in a typical 5×3 reel layout with a slightly unusual number of paylines, 23. As in any Thunderkick slot you will need at least $0.10 to play, while the maximum bet allowed is $100. When it comes to the controls menu, everything is consistent to Thunderkick style, so no surprises there.
The surprises come when you find yourself in front of a boiling cauldron and you are supposed to make a potion (or better said, grog) by using the ingredients on the shelf including all kinds of magic potions, hearts, moths, flowers and inevitably, frogs.
The frog is the Wild in this game, which means that it will help you out in a winning combination if you are lacking one symbol, but the frog does much more than that.
We will add more details on this wacky frog in the next section. The high paying symbols are the Moth paying 10 times your stake for five matching symbols, the Flower which will return your stake 6 times and the heart, worth 3 credits for five of a kind. The low paying symbols are depicted as vials of potion in purple, green and blue.
What is unusual in this slot is that the symbols do not, actually, spin. They disappear or drop. This means that whenever a winning combination is formed these symbols disappear and leave space for the new ones. Therefore you have to hit the spin button only when there are no more winning combinations.
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Special Features
Frog Grog is another one of Thunderkick’s slots that relies on the in-play features and no Free Spins, with the addition of one random Mystery Game.
In the base game the Dropping Symbols come tied to Multipliers, which are shown on the left side of the reel grid and they climb from 1x to 7x. Actually, each spin starts with a multiplier of 1x and if it turns out to be the winning spin, the multiplier will climb up by one. This means that each subsequent spin will increase the multiplier until you reach 7x. If there is no winning combination the multiplier resets.
Second in-play feature is based on the Wild Frog. Whenever the Frog appears it will burp and spit fire onto the reel and the row, thus eliminating all symbols except for frogs. This leaves space for new symbols to fill and possibly form a winning combo. The effect of the frog burping and breathing fire is so comical that we couldn’t wait to see the frog on the reels.
Finally, watch out when the blue cloud of smoke puffs out of the cauldron as it means that you have hit the Mystery Game, which can appear on any non-winning spin. When this happens all low-paying symbols fall into the cauldron or disappear leaving space for high-paying symbols and frogs. The multiplier ladder is also active during the Mystery Game.
Maximum Payout
We are used to Thunderkick’s bet range of $100, so we didn’t expect anything more or less from them. The game comes with an RTP of 96.1% and low variance, which means that you will get paid regularly in this game.
The most you could get form a spin is 1,616 times your stake, which is not bad considering the fact that there is no Free Spins game here.
Summary
Thunderkick definitely have a bold and creative team that surprises us with each new theme. Frog Grog is funny, entertaining and definitely unique with the wacky frog that blows fire. Still, we are not so enthusiastic about their attempt to leave out special features.
While the slot rewarded us regularly, we soon got tired of it, precisely because the game has no highlight. The Mystery Game should pose as the climax of the game but it does not add much to the excitement or to our balance. Frog Grog is an eye-catcher and fun to try, but not more than that.