Stellar Cash Chicken Fox 5x Skillstar Slot – Free Demo

A barnyard with four jackpot meters bolted on top

Four fixed jackpot meters sit above the reels in the Stellar Cash lineup from independent studio Lightning Box Games, and Stellar Cash Chicken Fox 5x Skillstar employs one of the more conventional themes so far. They read 100, 500, 5,000 and 25,000 credits for Mini, Minor, Major and Grand, and the game's own display is the only place those four figures are shown. As the title makes reference, I'm off to the barnyard. The chickens come in four kinds — Rooster, Hen, White chicken and Chick — and each of them carries a catch tag that only matters in the bonus. It's some chicken-and-fox activity alongside wilds, Free Games, fixed jackpots and a skill game.

It's usual to go vivid when you go barnyard. Lightning Box Games has most certainly done that, and chickens, foxes and eggs on the reels are as showy as you could wish them. The one base-game frame I kept has two Gold Eggs on it, on reels 2 and 5, one short of the three that start the Free Games, with Wild Lady sitting on reel 1. Spaceships float at both ends of the jackpot meters. Three of them, on reels 3, 4 and 5, are what starts the other round. The activity moves to the Chicken Catch Bonus in the Free Games, and the foxes seize the reels.

Twenty lines for thirty coins

The 20 paylines cost 30 coins a spin. Those same 30 coins also buy eligibility for the Stellar Cash Bonus, so the jackpot round is not a separate purchase. RTP, meanwhile, is respectable, yielding a value of 96.27% with no buy or ante version to cloud it.

Central to the game is the wild trio itself, and Wild Lady substitutes during the base game, while Wild Fox and Wild Fox5 show up for the bonus. Wild Lady covers everything except the Gold Egg, so she cannot help you into the Free Games. Wins are paid left to right from the leftmost reel on adjacent reels. Only the highest win counts on each payline, and wins on different paylines are added together. Bear in mind that the Gold Egg scatter pays anywhere. Its wins are added to the payline wins rather than replacing them. It does not require the leftmost reel to do its work. Scatter wins are multiplied by the number of lines played as well as by the bet multiplier.

What the Gold Eggs start and what the foxes do with it

Landing 3, 4, or 5 Gold Eggs on the reels grants 8, 15, or 30 Free Games, and before the round, players may tackle Skillstar. It is an optional catch-the-eggs mini game which is skippable. The fox is steered left and right, and the game ends when three golden eggs are missed and drop to the ground. It does not alter the RTP and it pays nothing. The top of that trigger scale needs all five Gold Eggs on screen at once. The Gold Egg appears in the base game only, so it is gone for the duration of the round it starts.

Free Games are played at the triggering lines and wager. Wild Lady drops out for the duration and the two foxes take her place. They cannot be retriggered, though a couple of alterations happen in the bonus. A big one is Fox and Fox5. They are wild for chickens during the round and catch Chickens for their cash value or White Eggs for additional Free Games — 1, 2, 3 or 5 with Fox, and 5, 10, 15 or 25 with Fox5. Fox5 reaches those larger numbers by multiplying the White Egg award by five. That's how the round prolongs itself instead of a retrigger, by up to 18 additional Free Games with Fox and 80 with Fox5 per spin. A fox that lands without a chicken or a white egg under it still adds games, +1 for Fox and +5 for Fox5.

In addition, every payline and catching win with Fox5 pays 5 times.

Three spaceships and a picking round I never opened

For those looking past the Free Games, Stellar Cash Chicken Fox 5x Skillstar also offers a second bonus, and three spaceships on reels 3, 4 and 5 unlock a picking round of 6 challenge levels plus a Jackpot Level. The spaceship cannot be substituted and appears in the base game only. An X costs a life, and 3 X or a Jackpot Prize finishes the round. Each level puts up a set of icons to choose from, hiding a prize, an advance symbol or an X. Finish the 6 levels and you attain Mini, Minor, Major or Grand, matching 3 of a kind. Across 222 spins I never saw the round trigger, so those four meters were a display and nothing else for the whole session. The jackpots are fixed rather than progressive and are not multiplied by the bet multiplier. The round cannot trigger during Free Games.

222 spins at 12.00, one Chicken Catch Bonus

Across 222 spins at 12.00 a spin I wagered 2,664.00 and received back 1,664.40. The balance went from 1,000.00 to 0.40 and never once rose above the figure it started at. That was a 62.5% return that drained the balance on the final spin, with the best hit of the bunch worth 44 times the stake. That hit took the balance from 316.00 to 832.00.

Nevertheless, the game does not land wins at a frequency that makes it simple to stay motivated. Only 38 of 222 spins paid anything at all, and 20 of those for less than the stake. The four biggest after the bonus were 336.00 on spin 172, 192.00 on spin 80, 115.20 on spin 157 and 74.40 on spin 10. One dry stretch went 22 spins. It ended on spin 134. Its Free Games are where the catching mechanic does its work in conjunction with a 5x multiplier. That multiplier can transform a modest win into something else. Mine arrived once, on spin 102, delivered 30 Free Games and paid 528.00. It was the only bonus of either kind I saw. That was 32% of everything I won.

Minty’s Closing Thought: Strip the meters and the spaceships off this and what is left is Chicken Fox 5x Skillstar — the same 20 lines, the same two foxes, the same catch tags. The Stellar Cash layer adds a second trigger condition that my 222 spins never met, so the round I can actually report on is the Chicken Catch Bonus, and it supplied 32% of the 1,664.40 that came back.