Ants Attack

Ants Attack Slot Review

A soldier ant in a steel helmet stands guard beneath the reels, rifle in both gloved hands, defending a canvas tent pegged into the jungle grass. The war he’s fighting is mostly a delay, and that’s the interesting thing about Ants Attack: it builds a bank of multipliers that multiply each other across four reels, then wipes them clean on every single spin, saving the compounding for its bonus games. It’s a slot that keeps its best maths locked up, and whether that’s patience-testing or tension-building depends entirely on your appetite for a long build.

Bullshark Games has dressed that maths in a bright, thick-outlined comic style rather than anything grim. Ants Attack runs on a 5×4 grid with 20 paylines at 96.3% RTP, with volatility four marks up the five-mark scale and a 12,000x ceiling. The studio sits alongside Age of Seth, Amazing Miceketeers and Arctic Duel in its catalogue. The question is whether the multiplier maths survives the march from base game to bonus.

Base Game & Features

The structure is straightforward: five reels, four rows, twenty fixed paylines, wins formed left to right from the leftmost reel. Only the highest combination on each line counts. What makes the base game more than a waiting room is the row of multipliers hanging above reels two through five.

Reel Multipliers

Each of reels 2, 3, 4 and 5 carries a multiplier that starts every spin at x1. When a winning line passes through more than one of these reels, the multipliers multiply together before being applied to the win. A line through a single boosted reel takes that multiplier on its own.

In practice that means a line crossing a x3 reel and a x4 reel pays twelve times its base value, and a line threading all four upgraded reels can get out of hand quickly. It’s multiplicative, not additive, which is the whole engine of the game.

The multipliers reset with every new base game spin, so the value is in catching them while they’re stacked. Reel one sits outside the system entirely, which concentrates the interesting maths on the right-hand side of the grid.

Multiplier Upgrader Symbol

Upgrader symbols can land on reels 2 to 5 in the base game and both bonus games. When one lands, it immediately adds a random value to that reel’s multiplier. If the reel already carries a boost, the values add together rather than replacing each other.

Several can land in the same spin, including several on the same reel, each adding its own value. The possible additions run the full range:

• 1x
• 2x
• 3x
• 4x
• 5x
• 6x
• 7x
• 8x
• 9x
• 10x

Once it has done its work, the upgrader transforms into a random paying symbol or a Wild, and where several are on the grid at once, each can become something different. An upgrader is never a dead symbol: it boosts its reel and then joins the grid as something that can win.

The best base game moments come from a win threading through two or three upgraded reels at once. The order of operations matters here too – the upgrader adds its value the moment it lands, so a line passing through that reel on the same spin already benefits from it.

Expanding Wild Symbol

The Wild substitutes for every symbol in the paytable and can land in both the base game and the bonus games. The Expanding Wild version stretches across its reel when it lands, in one of three directions:

• Up only
• Down only
• Both directions, covering the full reel

Only one Expanding Wild can land per reel per spin. There’s an edge case worth knowing: one pointing up on the top row, or down on the bottom row, has nowhere to go and stays put as a single symbol.

If an expansion runs over a regular Wild, that Wild relocates to a random empty cell free of other Wilds, or is overwritten if no such cell exists. It’s a tidy piece of design that stops expansions from cannibalising each other.

Because the expansion direction is random, the same symbol on the same reel can behave very differently from spin to spin. A both-directions drop on a middle reel is a full column of substitution, which on four rows is a lot of coverage for one symbol.

Triggering the bonus games falls to the Scatter symbol. Three of them start the lower tier and four the higher, which makes the fourth Scatter a meaningful catch rather than a marginal one.

Ants Attack Bonus Games

Two bonus games carry the colony war forward, both built on the same escalation: the Reel multipliers stop resetting. For the duration of the feature they’re progressive, climbing with every upgrader that lands and only settling when the round ends. The maximum win can be achieved in all game modes, bonus and base alike.

Ant March

Three FS Scatter symbols start the Ant March with 8 free spins. All the base game mechanics carry over, with the multipliers now persisting spin to spin. An upgrader that lands on the third spin is still adding value on the eighth.

One housekeeping detail: if the triggering spin itself boosted any reels, those multipliers reset to x1 before the first bonus spin, so the feature always starts from a clean slate. It’s a small rule, but it stops a lucky trigger from front-loading the whole round.

Colony Assault

Four FS Scatter symbols launch the Colony Assault with 10 free spins and the same progressive multipliers. The difference is a guarantee of at least three Multiplier Upgrader symbols on the first spin, which puts the feature ahead of the Ant March from the off.

The same reset rule applies to any reels boosted on the trigger. Three guaranteed upgraders on spin one, each adding up to 10x, means the round typically opens with real multiplier weight already on the grid before a single win has landed.

Both rounds share a retrigger rule with an unusual wrinkle. Each FS Scatter that lands during the feature adds one free spin, and that spin is added before the win is calculated, after which the Scatters transform into a random paying symbol or a regular Wild.

A retrigger therefore isn’t just extra spins; it’s extra symbols on the very spin that earned them. The two modes compared:

• Ant March – 3 Scatters, 8 free spins, progressive Reel multipliers
• Colony Assault – 4 Scatters, 10 free spins, progressive Reel multipliers, minimum 3 Multiplier Upgraders guaranteed on the first spin

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.7/10

This is a slot that holds its fire. Most of a session is spent watching the tent fill with multipliers only for the next spin to clear them, and the payoff for sitting through that is the one thing worth coming for: a bonus round where nothing resets and the whole campaign builds to a single escalating finish, the colony’s war chest opening all at once.

The strength is how quickly the feature gets going once it arrives. Colony Assault opens with three upgraders guaranteed, and retriggers feed fresh symbols into the very spin that earned them, so a good round gathers speed rather than spluttering.

The weakness is that everything interesting is locked behind three or four Scatters, and at four marks of volatility that door doesn’t open quickly. Players who enjoy a long build landing in one big hit will feel right at home on this forest floor. Anyone after steady, frequent wins will find the grass thin.

Ants Attack FAQs

• What is the RTP of Ants Attack?

  Ants Attack runs at 96.3% RTP, a healthy figure that sits above plenty of comparable releases.
• What is the maximum win on Ants Attack?

  The maximum win is 12,000x your bet, and it can be achieved in all game modes.
• How many paylines does Ants Attack have?

  It’s a 5-reel, 4-row game with 20 fixed paylines.
• What is the grid size of Ants Attack?

  The game plays on a 5×4 grid, with Reel multipliers sitting above reels 2 through 5.
• Can you buy the bonus on Ants Attack?

  Yes, a Bonus Buy button sits alongside the reels for direct access to the bonus games.
• How do the bonus games retrigger on Ants Attack?

  Landing an FS Scatter during either bonus game banks an extra spin, credited before that spin’s win is worked out, and the Scatter itself then becomes a random paying symbol or a Wild.
• How do the Reel multipliers work in Ants Attack?

  Reels 2 through 5 each carry a multiplier from x1. A win passing through several of them has the multipliers multiplied together, and in the bonus games they grow progressively instead of resetting each spin.
• What is the difference between Ant March and Colony Assault?

  Ant March needs 3 Scatters and awards 8 free spins; Colony Assault needs 4 and awards 10, with at least three Multiplier Upgrader symbols guaranteed on its first spin.