Play Meet the Meerkats for Free

Symbols in this game are all cartoon meerkats, including the lady meerkat with tea dress and pearl earrings, the gentleman meerkat with bowtie and tanktop, the schoolchild meerkat with pigtails, and the little meerkats wearing back-to-front caps! These quirky characters make up the higher payouts in the game with each symbol paying from 200x to 300x your bet when you spin 5 matching symbols on the reels together.

The lower paying symbols in the game include the telephone and the television, which both pay 125x your bet for 5 symbols, and the high card symbols, 10 to Ace, which all pay from 50x to 100x your bet for 5 symbols. All the symbols have a wood-effect, aged background or a gilt frame to give the game a retro, 1950s feel.

The wild symbol is the 4 little meerkats standing on each other’s shoulders, all wearing a blue cap pulled back-to-front. This cheeky symbol stands in for all the other symbols in the game, except the scattered door symbol, to create more potential winning combinations.

The purple door symbol is the scatter in this game. This door is surrounded by plants and features a little window – a real cottage front door. The symbol has a gilt surround to add to its air of importance. When you spin at least 3 of these scattered doors, you trigger the free spins feature which awards 5 free spins.

Once you spin at least 3 purple doors, they doors all open and you are whisked away to a new screen. Here one of the three main meerkats is selected as your special symbol for the duration of the free spins round – this symbol will appear more often on the reels. After your meerkat is selected, a random multiplier award is applied, which can be 2x, 3x or 4x. Now when you hit a payout with your meerkat, you also get a multiplier award. This is the round where you have the best potential for boosting your balance with some hefty cash prizes.

The purple door does not appear again during the free spins round, so this is a once-only feature. After you return to the main game though, the purple door icon starts appearing again, so keep your eyes peeled.

Although there is no bonus game in this slot, there is another feature that appears regularly. When the first reel is filled with either the mother meerkat, the father meerkat or the daughter meerkat, the hold and re-spin feature is triggered. During this feature the triggering meerkat and all wild symbols hold in place and the other symbols re-spin. If any more of these symbols appear during the re-spin, another re-spin will be awarded. This feature is a nice touch from Push Gaming as the hold feature triggers regularly to award not only some great potential payouts but also some great looking visuals with the reels filled up with the meerkat characters.

The mother, father and daughter meerkats are all stacked symbols so they appear at full size covering the reels for a fantastic visual effect. But remember, only one of the positions on the reel needs to be covered by any part of the meerkat to lock it into position on reels 2, 3,4 or 5 after the triggering meerkat has been locked into position on reel 1.

Meet the Meerkats is another strong offering from Push Gaming. The software company knows how to create an attractive theme and load it with features for imaginative gameplay. Players looking for bonus games might be a tad disappointed as this is not where the magic lies with this slot, however, we found the free spins and regular re-spins available more than made up for the lack of bonus round.