5 Frogs Pokie
Fans of amphibians will perhaps be less than impressed by the strange creatures that populate the 5 Frogs pokie machine from Aristocrat, but the rest of us will enjoy seeing these Oriental-inspired beasties giving players the choice of spins, multipliers or mystery bonuses.
A Chinese theme runs right through the whole game, with players seeing golden lanterns, lotus flowers, wishing wells and bonsai trees spinning down the 5 reels, which come with the Reel Power feature. This means that rather than having paylines running in fixed positions across the reels, winning combinations come from any 3 matching symbols stopping anywhere on adjacent ones, as long as the row starts on the left side.
There’s 40 lines to this game, which gives a minimum stake of 0.40 per spin and players wanting to see how much they get with each win should check out the paytable, where they will also find details of how bonus features are triggered and how the frogs can bring in extra rewards.
Aristocrat have clearly spent a lot of time and effort giving this game a distinctive theme, with a stylish red and gold background design and pin-sharp graphics across the reels.
Hopping to the Game
Playing card symbols from 9 through to A will bring in the smaller but more frequently-occurring wins, with payouts ranging from 5x, 10x and 100x the line bet when the 9 stops on 3, 4 or 5 reels on a line, to 10x, 40x or 200x when the A stops in the same positions.
Of more interest are the picture symbols that are designed around the Oriental theme, with the lowest value being a wishing well that returns 15x, 45x or 300x the line stake to players. The bonsai, lotus flower and lucky coins are worth progressively more, but the most rewarding symbol is the golden lantern that pays 60x, 125x or an impressive 1250x with 3, 4 or 5 on a line.
5 Frogs
Unable to connect to MySQL: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory
Amphibian Extras
The 5 frogs of the title wait until the bonus rounds to make an appearance, with the exception of the gold frog who is a wild symbol, substituting for other and landing on the middle reel to potentially complete winning lines.
They are not conventional-looking frogs either, instead being stylised statues in a variety of colours.
A ying and yang symbol that looks a little like white and gold tadpoles, acts as a scatter, which can appear on 3, 4 or 5 reels to pay out 3x, 6x or 25x the stake per spin respectively. This will also take players to the main feature, although it can be triggered at random as well.
This is basically a free spins round, where players get to decide if they want lots of spins with a small win multiplier or fewer spins where wild substitution winnings are multiplied at a higher rate.
The options are presented as different frog statue symbols, with the white frog option being 25 free spins and wild multipliers of 2x, 3x or 5x being at one end. Moving up, we see 20, 15, 13 or just 10 spins with the blue, green, red and orange frogs, and wild substitution multipliers that range from 3x to 40x.
There’s also a mystery choice that sees any combinations awarded, so lucky players could get 25 spins with 40x multipliers, while less fortunate ones could get 10 spins with a 2x multiplier in force.
In the free spins, all frogs symbols are wild, so players should see plenty of winning combinations appear, while any 3 or more scatters will add another round to the end of the current one.
The Verdict
5 Frogs is an all-round quality pokie from a quality developer, which has some interesting bonus features on offer. By giving players the choice of more spins or bigger wild multipliers, while adding extra wilds to the reels at the same time, this can be a highly rewarding game to try out.
It's perhaps a pity that during the base game, the wild only appears on the middle reel, making it more difficult for it to complete combinations, but overall this game should see players score some nice wins and it certainly looks good.