Pirots 3 Slot – Free Demo

A caged bandit, a train and four colours of gem

Elk Studios has crafted one of the busiest collection slots in its catalogue. This third game hangs its features on an outlaw theme: a caged bandit, a train running along the edges of the grid, and duels between adjacent birds. It is built on the same team of colour-coded birds that carried the first two games in the series.

Pirots 3 offers a grid that grows up to 8 rows and 7 columns, and it has no paylines at all. The grid does not start at that size, and it expands as symbols are cleared. The game opens with the birds already perched on the grid, each one seeking the gems that match its own colour, and all of the symbols that show on the grid are present in the form of gems and feature symbols. The birds are the only pieces that move; the gems and the feature symbols sit and wait to be collected. The birds pay for everything they collect. A collected coin pays its own value against the current bet level. The gems themselves are able to be upgraded to greater payout levels, up to a maximum of level 7. One upgrade symbol lifts a single gem, while the upgrade all symbol moves all four gems at once, each by one, two or three steps. I'll get to that a bit later. There's also a wild symbol, alongside a black bandit wild. It substitutes for any gems at their current payout level, and the black bandit stands for the highest paying gem. Dynamite is the symbol that changes the shape of the game: a collected dynamite explodes symbols and pushes the grid outwards, up to the 8 by 7 maximum.

What the birds set off on their way across the grid

Its collection engine is the first of this slot's distinctive features that you will notice, and this comes into play from the moment that a bird travels across the grid. Two adjacent birds can also break off into a duel, moving apart and shooting in straight or diagonal directions, and three or more birds standing adjacent always set that off. Every time such happens, the symbols it lands on are collected and paid. A transform symbol turns a cluster of gems next to the bird into that bird's own colour, and those gems can instead become feature symbols. That leaves spaces for fresh symbols to drop into. A collected peanut fills the empty spaces back in, which lets each bird cross them one time to reach clusters it could not otherwise get to. The same procedure will take place should another symbol be collected. A collected key opens the bandit's cage, and the bandit lands on the grid once the birds are unable to collect anything more. This carries on until no further collections are able to be made. Clearing the entire grid during the peanut feature or the bandit's escape starts the coin game, where the birds throw lassos at coin bags while scorpions drop in alongside them, and a bird that catches a scorpion is out. That's not all that the collection does though. Upgrade symbols also come into play, and these lift a gem's payout level by one, two or three steps, to a maximum of level 7. The train heist sits at the sides: 2 or 4 positions on the left and right carry a train backdrop, and a bird that collects one of those symbols can then collect from the backdrop on the opposite side, picking up 1, 2 or 3 feature symbols before it disembarks.

Free drops that inherit the grid they were won on

Pirots 3 also has something called the Bonus Game built into it, and three bonus symbols collected by the birds in a single round will trigger the free drops. In the 500 spins I logged that happened twice, on spin 175 and on spin 244. These work in the same way as free spins in a typical online slot game. The two rounds were 69 spins apart. The collection engine stays in operation during this as well. A Super Bonus is offered too, and its intro card counts out five free drops. Everything the round builds is carried over, though, with the grid size, the collection meter, additional bonus symbols and the gem payout levels all enduring between drops. A captured Super Bonus frame shows the grid at its full 8 rows by 7 columns, with the drop counter in the corner reading 3 of 5 and a Super Bonus badge in the lower left.

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Pirots 3 against the first two games

There are a few online slots that folks will always recall from the Elk Studios brand, and slots like Pirots and Pirots 2 stand out. But Pirots 3 is certainly another. The grid you finish a round on is rarely the grid you started it on, since every clear and every dynamite pushes it further out.

Two Bonus Games in 500 spins

One other thing to recall about Pirots 3 is that the ceiling is printed on the help screen in cash, tied to the maximum bet. The coin game carries a Max Win bag that does the same job. That's a cap the Max Win coin pays the remainder up to. Because the figure is based on the maximum bet, the ceiling sits lower at any stake below that. Across 500 spins at a stake of one credit I wagered 500 credits and won back 276.40, with only 92 spins paying anything at all and the balance never once rising above where it began. That works out at a 55.3% return for the session, and 47 of those 92 paying spins gave back less than the stake. The two Bonus Games I did see paid 35 and 72 times the stake between them. The low point was 4,776.40 from a 5,000.00 start, and the longest gap without a win ran 35 spins, ending on spin 428. That was 39% of everything won.

The Minty Summary: Two Bonus Games carried 107 of the 276.40 credits that came back over 500 spins, and the base game filled the rest with 47 paying spins worth less than the stake. Grid size, collection meter and gem payout levels all persist into the free drops, so whatever the round has already built goes into the bonus with it.