Play Barnyard Bucks for Free

Despite there being 14 symbols on the paytable, only 8 of them are animals you might see on a farm - the remaining are card symbols or the golden egg of the bonus round. Returning to the cattle for now, they have been pampered and well looked after, all of them looking like prize family pets rather than the lifeblood of the farmer.

The mother hen, along with her woollen bonnet, is the lowest of the bunch, coming in at between 15 and 150 credits. This is actually a good range to be working with, and sets the bar high for the remaining 7 tiles. Next there’s the proud momma cow with her little calf coming in at the same valuation, followed by a slight increase when we reach the sheep tile; here we get between 30 and 300 coins.

The pig, as we already know, is the one with all the bacon, but the prancing pony comes in a close second with the max payout of 2,000. As for the crazy eyed goat, its payouts come in the form of free games and not money, and so he has a value all his own. The scatter symbols can appear anywhere in Barnyard Bucks, allowing you an easier time of getting three, four or five groupings.

That large golden egg symbol needs to be found in a match of three, four or five before you can enter the hen house; once inside it’s all about the eggs and their quality. You click on the hen you wish to receive the egg from and it’ll land in the basket - not every egg gives a win, only the golden ones will do that. And watch out for the black egg as that will have you ejected from the shed quicker than you can blink your eyes.

A counter of your current total can be found in the right hand upper corner, allowing you to watch your funds as they grow, or weep if you’re having a bad time of it. Don’t feel too hard done by if you don’t get a good bonus, not all of us are destined to be egg collectors.

The controls may look completely different to other MultiSlot games, but they’re all the same, the only real difference being that you only have one part to the betting in Barnyard Bucks as opposed to two. The plus and minus buckets control the value of your stake, which can be increased up to 5 credits; an easier way to get that total is by clicking Max Bet.

Next to the Max Bet widget is another called Bet One; don’t let it confuse you because of its name actually changes the number of winlines and not the bet itself. Yes, winlines impact on the bet, but labelling it like this has made the controls unnecessarily complicated.

Ahhhhhh, we just don’t know. Sitting on the fence isn’t what we do by choice, but when you have a game that does that itself, it’s hard for us to come to any solid conclusion.

Barnyard Bucks is good when all is said and done, but it isn’t anything special or different when compared with other brands like Playtech and Microgaming. If a brand can’t distinguish itself from other titles from different brands, why bother?