Beaver Bonk

Beaver Bonk Slot Review

A beaver in denim overalls grins from his tree stump, log on his shoulder, while water spills over the rocks behind him. Beaver Bonk uses that lumberjack-camp set-up for a wild that does more than just substitute: the pipes on this grid are wilds that also sit and wait for something to come along and burst them.

The construction underneath holds up. Backseat Gaming has given it a 5×5 grid with 15 fixed paylines, a 96.01% RTP and a 20,000x maximum win, well clear of the ceilings on the studio’s own Banana Farm and Blade Master. Wins need at least three matching symbols on adjacent reels from the left.

Base Game & Features

The base game runs on a 5×5 grid with 15 predefined lines, and wins are paid for three or more matching symbols on adjacent reels starting from the leftmost. Most of the action comes from the special symbols rather than the pays themselves, and there are four of them.

The Pipe, the Arrow and the Beaver

The Pipe symbol is the wild. It substitutes for all paying symbols, only one can land per reel, and it never shares a reel with a Bonus symbol. During the bonus games it’s also persistent, which matters a great deal further down.

The Arrow symbol nudges its entire reel one step upwards when it lands, and it acts as a wild too. Arrows can’t land on reels without a Pipe, or on reels where the Pipe already sits at the top position, so they only ever move pipes that have room to move. An arrow shifting a pipe upwards can drag it out of a losing position, or line it up with pipes on neighbouring reels.

The Beaver symbol is where the game gets its name. When it lands, every Pipe on the grid breaks and spills water downwards to the bottom of the grid, turning those reels into full or partial wild reels. Each flooded reel picks up a random multiplier from a ladder running from 2x all the way to 200x, and when several wild reels take part in the same win, their multipliers are added together before the payout is applied. The beaver is a wild as well.

Where the pipe sits decides how much water comes out. A pipe on the bottom row floods a single position; a pipe near the top can drown most of the reel. Flooding two reels in the same winning combination is where the added multipliers start to earn their keep.

Paytable

Pays are multiples of the total bet, shown for three, four and five of a kind. The paytable is dynamic, so the credit values shift with your stake while the multiples stay put.

• Gold-filled hat: 5x, 12x, 25x
• Bag of gold: 3x, 7x, 15x
• Axe: 2x, 5x, 10x
• Acorn: 1x, 2.5x, 5x
• A: 0.5x, 1x, 2x
• K and Q: 0.2x, 0.7x, 1.5x
• J and 10: 0.1x, 0.5x, 1x

The wilds match the top paying symbol at five of a kind, paying 25x the bet, which means the Pipe, Arrow and Beaver all sit at the head of the table alongside the gold-filled hat. The Bonus symbol is the last of the specials: it’s available in every game mode, and one can land per reel.

Below the hat, the pays fall away quickly. The bag of gold and the axe are the only mid-tier symbols worth watching, and the four royals pay so little at three of a kind that a line of them barely registers. Real wins come from the wilds stacking through flooded reels, not from the base symbols.

Beaver Bonk Bonus Games

There are three bonus games, and which one you get depends on how many Bonus symbols land to trigger it. All three award 10 free spins, and all three retrigger the same way: two Bonus symbols during the round add three free spins, three add five.

• 3 Bonus symbols: Wild Water, 10 free spins
• 4 Bonus symbols: Flood Frenzy, 10 free spins
• 5 Bonus symbols: Bonky Bonanza, 10 free spins

Wild Water

The entry-level round. Pipe symbols are persistent until a Beaver symbol hammers them, so pipes stay put and wait for a beaver to come along and burst them. A pipe that survives several spins untouched is a pipe still holding its position when the beaver finally lands.

Flood Frenzy

One step up. Pipe symbols here are persistent for the entire duration of the bonus, regardless of what lands on top of them, so the grid steadily fills with pipes that the beaver can break at any time. Once a pipe is down, the only thing that can shift it is the beaver himself.

Bonky Bonanza

The full works, and the one the whole build is pointing at. Pipes are persistent for the whole round, you’re guaranteed at least two Pipe symbols on the first spin, and a Beaver symbol lands on every single spin.

With a beaver guaranteed each time and pipes never leaving, the multipliers stack up round after round. Every spin breaks whatever pipes are on the grid, and every break carries its own multiplier draw. New pipes land to replace the broken ones, so the grid never empties.

Feature Buy

Everything on offer can be bought from the cart button, and wins evaluate at the base bet. Every option runs at 96.01% RTP, identical to the base game, so nothing you buy changes the maths. Availability can vary by operator and jurisdiction.

• Bonus Boost mode: 2x the bet
• Beaver Spins mode: 50x the bet
• Wild Water: 100x the bet
• Mystery Bonus: 200x the bet
• Flood Frenzy: 250x the bet
• Bonky Bonanza: 650x the bet

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.8/10

Playing Beaver Bonk is mostly watching a dam get built. Pipes land and hold their ground, arrows shuffle them about, and the reel set slowly fills with potential until the beaver arrives and the whole thing lets go at once. That slow build, and the release at the end of it, is the reason to pick this over a faster 15-line game.

What Backseat Gaming has got right is the top of the bonus ladder: Bonky Bonanza guarantees the beaver every spin with a grid that never empties, and it’s one of the more complete free-spins rounds you’ll find. What it’s got wrong is the base game in between, which can serve up pipes for long stretches with nothing coming to break them, and 650x is a steep door charge for skipping the queue.

If you like a game that asks for patience and then pays it back with interest, the logging camp is a good place to spend an evening. Anyone after quick, regular hits will find the water cold. For the rest of us, there’s a very contented beaver waiting at the end of it.

Beaver Bonk FAQs

• What is the RTP of Beaver Bonk?

  The RTP is 96.01%, and it holds at that figure across every bonus buy option as well as the base game.
• What is the maximum win on Beaver Bonk?

  The maximum win is 20,000 times the bet amount.
• How many paylines does Beaver Bonk have?

  Wins are awarded by matching at least three symbols on one of the 15 predefined lines on adjacent reels, starting from the leftmost reel.
• What is the grid size of Beaver Bonk?

  Beaver Bonk is a 5-reel, 5-row game.
• Who makes Beaver Bonk?

  Beaver Bonk is made by Backseat Gaming.
• What does the Beaver symbol do in Beaver Bonk?

  When the Beaver symbol lands, all Pipe symbols on the grid break and spill water downwards, creating full or partial wild reels with a random multiplier between 2x and 200x. It also substitutes for all paying symbols as a wild.
• How do you trigger the bonus games in Beaver Bonk?

  Three Bonus symbols trigger Wild Water, four trigger Flood Frenzy, and five trigger Bonky Bonanza. Each awards 10 free spins, and during the round two Bonus symbols add three spins while three add five.
• What does the Arrow symbol do in Beaver Bonk?

  When an Arrow lands, the whole reel it sits on shifts up by one position. Arrows only appear on reels carrying a Pipe that isn’t already at the top, and they substitute for all paying symbols as wilds.