Meet The Meerkats

2.1 /5
1.7/5 lcb.org
2.5/5 gamesandcasino.com
  • Type:

    Video slots
  • Reels:

    5
  • Paylines:

    40
meet_the_meerkats_ss_1.jpg meet_the_meerkats_ss_2.jpg

With the Meet the Meerkats online slot, available at Push Gaming casinos, you're getting to play with a complete family that consists of a mother, a father, a daughter and quadruplet boys. This family appears on the reels in ways that really take advantage of the format in a smart, drawn style of graphics that looks like something out of a high-quality Disney film. The gameplay is pretty fast-paced as a result of how these symbols are handled, and it's this style of play that makes the game stand out as a whole.

Format and Layout

This is a title that uses five reels with four rows. A popular layout with this format is 40 paylines because of the way they fall symmetrically across the reels. That's the case here, and you'll be able to only play with 40 lines because there's not an option to deactivate any of them. Betting is determined by a selection of 12 different bet sizes that range from $0.40 to $100 each. In our descriptions of the bet sizes below, we will discuss these wins as multiples of the entire wager size.

Stacked Wild Symbols

There is a symbol that's stacked four spots high that holds the quadruplet boys in this meerkat family. It does not get its own payouts, and it does not substitute for the door bonus symbol discussed below. However, what it does do is give you lots of ways to get paid by covering up to four different spots on a given reel. This can also activate the re-spin feature as we'll also note below. This stacked wild is a key part of the gameplay that helps to increase the hit-rate and lower the volatility of the game as a whole.

Scattered Doors and Free Spins

The door symbol appears on each reel, and it's a scattered bonus symbol. You only need at least three of these to activate the bonus feature, which is based around free spins. No matter how many you use to activate this feature, you will always pick up five free spins. There are no extra goodies assigned to these free turns, but that's okay because it helps to keep the volatility down, which is a key point to this slot.

Re-spin Feature

Aside from the wild symbol, there are four other stacked symbols that come four symbols high. These are the mother, the father and the daughter. If any of these fill the first reel completely, you'll be paid out normally, and then the second, third, fourth and fifth reels will re-spin while the first holds still to give you a free chance to hit more wins.

Stacked Symbols and Payouts

The father symbol is the top-paying regular symbol in this game, and he pays 7.5x for five of a kind. Mind you that this is a multiple of your whole bet, so it would be like a 300x win in a regular line bet-based pay table. The mother symbol in orange gets you 6.25x, and the daughter pays 5x in red for five of a kind. Note that all three of these symbols will pay out for just two of a kind or more, which makes winning combinations really easy to hit when you get each symbol on the first two reels since they always come stacked four high.

Other Combinations and Prizes

The telephone and television symbols will each get you wins worth 3.125x for five of a kind. For the A symbol, you'll pick up 2.5x for five, and the win for the K or Q with five-of-a-kind combinations is 1.875x. At the bottom of the pay table are the J and 10 card rank symbols, and each of them are worth 1.25x for five on a payline.

Our Thoughts

We really like the general theme of the Meet the Meerkats slot, and it shows that Push Gaming is able to think outside of the box instead of just following the common slot motifs that are used out there the most. They've also incorporated this theme into the general gameplay with the stacked symbols that are made up of the different members of the family, including the particularly funny quadruplet boys piled up on top of each other and the very cute and put-together mother symbol. As far as features go, they are decent enough, and while they give some value, they do not hold so much that they increase the volatility beyond the low level that they were obviously aiming for with this game.

By Jesse Eddleman