Play When Pigs Fly for Free

As stated, the reel grid is not your usual 5x3 affair. Rather, NetEnt have deviated from the norm and created a cross-shaped grid. In other words, there is one row on reel one, three on reels two and four, five on the central reel and one on the fifth reel. The layout adapts as you play, though: it’s feasible that you could end up with a 5x5 reel grid. This adaptation means there are up to 3,125 ways to win. Incredible!

The shape of the reels changes when you trigger re-spins, and you can hit as many as five re-spins, each opening up two new symbols on the grid and thereby increasing the number of ways to win. A counter on the right-hand side will keep track of how many you have remaining.

If you’re fortunate enough to land a winning combo on your fifth and last re-spin, you’ll be granted eight free spins with a complete layout to work with. The animations are excellent here: rather than just have free spins added to your account, you’ll be shown the pig astronaut lying in the control room. Suddenly he reaches towards the monitor and adjusts the dial, setting your free spins to ‘8’ before giving a thumbs-up gesture.

The game itself takes place on what looks like an airbase, with a rocket ship standing off to the left-hand side and a pig astronaut raising a thumb on the right. The controls at the foot of the screen are the usual ones, with Spin and Auto Play buttons. You can also set your coin value here and select which level you wish to play. There are ten levels, each requiring 50 coins.

Game settings can be accessed by the player when he clicks on the spanner icon in the lower left corner of the screen. In certain casinos, you can select the quick spin option for swifter game play. Also in Settings, you are free to switch the intro screen, ambience sound and sound effects on and off. You are also able to adjust the graphical quality, and set the spacebar to function as the spin button if you so desire. Lastly, you can view your latest play history. When you have disconnected, Auto Play settings will return to default.

The soundtrack to When Pigs Fly features mystical music and the sound of rocket ships blasting into the ether. It’s the usual casino slot fare, unlikely to win any awards for originality, but hey: that’s why the mute button was invented.

The object is to find matching symbols on three or more adjacent reels, beginning from the leftmost reel. Where two matching combos are found, the pay-out is awarded for the longest one. Additional wins happen when more of the same type of icon are found on that payline. While you play, the goofy astronaut pig floats through the star-twinkled cosmos in the background.

Game symbols include playing card icons: 10, J, Q, K. These are unlike their usual casino equivalents, as they don’t feature suits – each appears in a different colour though. There’s also a When Pigs Fly logo, a female pig wearing an aviator hat, triple 7s in the form of three green balloons, a BAR, pig ears in an aviator hat and a porcine astronaut. The game logo is the most lucrative, furnishing players with a top pay-out of 1,000 coins. The wild, incidentally, appears on reels two, three, four and five.

Good wins are possible in When Pigs Fly, a slot which is both well-designed and entertaining.