Karate Pig Slot
Karate Pig sounds like the third Babe movie that got left on the cutting-room floor, but in fact, it’s a high-variance 5-reel video slot from that fine purveyor of slot games, Microgaming. Set in a feudal Japan populated by cute-as-a-button animals, including the eponymous martial artist hog, the game is similar to a great many 5x3 Microgaming titles, with stacked wilds, scatters and an array of fun bonus rounds.
Forty paylines are available from the get-go, meaning there’s a 10,000-coin jackpot to aim for. The coin range is between 0.01 and 0.50, so a large swathe of players can get in on the action. There’s no sense in claiming this is a serious game with a meaningful message. It just isn’t. Karate Pig is what good slot games should be: entertaining, silly and potentially lucrative.
Smirking Symbols
It’s unclear just what everyone is so happy about, but the symbols are clearly having a whale of a time. This is supposed to be feudal Japan, you think; shouldn’t everyone have their game faces on? As it is, the reels are populated by chuckling Buddhas, smirking geishas, laughing lucky kittens and chuckling tanukis (Japanese raccoon dogs, don’t you know?). There’s also a bonsai tree, a sushi hut, a tusked creature in a cut-off shirt with biceps like Phil Heath and the titular Karate Pig in his white karate suit, ready to wax on, wax off – or kick some ass, one of the two.
The Name Of The Game
It’ll sound familiar to you, but the object of the game is to land lines of matching combinations in order to, well, win some scratch. All wins in Karate Pig pay left-to-right except the scatter, which pays any. Bonus wins, meanwhile, are added to regular pay-line wins.
Unlike some other 5-reel games, Karate Pig doesn’t reward you for landing two matching symbols; you need to score at least three. The lowest-paying symbol is the bonsai tree, which pays 25 for a line of three and 225 for a line of five. The muscular tusked creature (we can’t, for the life of us, figure out who or what he is supposed to represent), on the other hand, pays 75 for three and 375 for five-in-a-line; the doughty Karate Pig pays 250 for three and a whopping 3,750 for five.
The 10,000 jackpot is achieved when you hit five Karate Pig logos. Even if you land three or four of these symbols, you’re still looking at solid pay-outs of 500 and 2,500, respectively. It should go without saying that only the highest win is paid per selected line.
Bumper Bonuses
There’s more to Karate Pig than a formulaic base game. We haven’t yet discussed the bonuses, which are plentiful. What you must know is that the aforementioned Karate Pig logo is wild; it appears in stacks and substitutes for all symbols except the gold coin scatter and the bonus scatter, the latter of which is a close-up of a grinning pig.
The bonus games are where Karate Pig really comes into its own. Not only can you activate (re-triggerable) free spins by landing two coin scatters anywhere on reels one and five, winning 15 free spins and a 2x multiplier, but you can enjoy a multi-level bonus feature too. This is triggered by hitting three or more ‘bonus pig’ scatter symbols, an occurrence which entitles you to choose between the Pork Chop Bonus or Hammer Bonus. Each time you compete either feature, you’ll be awarded with one of the traditional seven coloured karate belts. If you manage to earn all seven belts, you’ll step into Carnegie Hall and enter the Final Showdown Bonus feature.
It should be noted that both the Pork Chop and Hammer Bonus rounds are classic features whereby the player must pick from six options in each. Karate Pig will then demonstrate his array of skills, which are not limited to martial arts: he’s also a musician, a philosopher and a mean sushi chef.
The Final Showdown Bonus, meanwhile, entails a three-round confrontation between the Karate Pig and the muscular tusked creature. If the swine conquers his jacked-up foe, you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.
All Set For Pig Winnings?
Karate Pig invests plenty of attention in bonus features, hoping to lure eager gamers in. Some are better than others (two scatters to win free spins? Yes, please), though. Call us cynics, but we’ve always found guessing game bonuses to be a little trite; they slow down the pace of the action. All the same, this is a mostly fun game with decent pay-out potential depending on the volatility you experience.
