Hotel Yeti Way

Hotel Yeti Way Slot Review

Bamboo poles, a thatched roof, a coiled rope by the door and blue sky showing through the gaps: a beachside hotel lobby where the guest of honour is a yeti in sunglasses. The joke is the whole game. Take the yeti away and Hotel Yeti Way is a plain 6×4 ways slot with a short paytable; every scrap of character it has lives in one snowman’s habit of showing off the moment he lands.

That’s a thinner premise than it sounds, and Play’n GO know it, because they’ve built the entire maths around him: high volatility, an RTP of 94.24% that sits below what most players now expect, and no maximum win figure given. It’s the lighter cousin of Wild Falls 2 and shares its comic register with Rocco Gallo rather than the studio’s epic end. Whether one mascot can carry a whole hotel is what the rest of this sets out to answer.

The Yeti’s Three Tricks

The base game pays by ways rather than fixed lines, so matching symbols on adjacent reels from the left count regardless of their exact row. On a 6×4 grid that gives plenty of room for combinations to form, and the game reports each win as a count of ways rather than a line number. Small hits register as one or two ways won. The wild is the yeti himself, and he substitutes for every symbol except the scatter.

Each time the Yeti Wild lands, he activates one of three random base game features:

• Bungee Jumping – the yeti can create between 1 and 4 stacked wilds across the reels
• Surfing – the game names it as one of the three wild features, but gives no detail on what it does
• Scuba Diving – like Surfing, it is named in the rules without any further description

Bungee Jumping is the most concrete of the three, with stacked wilds doing exactly what stacked wilds do on a ways grid. A four-high stack of wilds on an early reel turns a large share of the board wild for that spin, and because ways pay from the left, an early stack lifts every combination behind it. The Surfing and Scuba Diving variants play out their own changes to the board instead, remaking symbols in place rather than stacking on top of them.

Each of the three carries its own volatility meter, a bar with no number attached, which is a fair hint that they behave differently from one another. Whichever trick arrives, the wild still stands in for every symbol except the scatter, so nothing about the substitution rules changes between them.

One wild per spin deciding which trick you get keeps the base game from settling into a rhythm. It’s a simple system. Without it, this would be a very ordinary set of spins indeed.

What the Symbols Pay

The paytable is a short one, with the wild doubling as the richest symbol on the board. Its pays are calculated against the total bet rather than a line bet, which matters on a ways-based game: the multiplier you see is the multiplier of your whole stake, not a slice of it. Six Yeti Wilds across the reels pay 3x the total bet.

• Yeti Wild – six of a kind pays 3x the total bet
• Shark – one that arrives in stacks on the reels
• Sunglasses, hat, flip-flops and sunscreen – the mid-tier holiday symbols
• Royals (10, J, Q, K, A) – the low-paying end of the board

The shark is worth a mention beyond its pay position, because it behaves differently from the rest of the board: it shows up in stacked formations, filling whole reels at a time. On a ways grid a stacked premium symbol is close to a stacked wild in effect, since every row it covers feeds the combinations behind it. The rest of the holiday tier and the royals pay for matches from the left like everything else.

Wins pay left to right on adjacent reels, and only the highest combination per way counts. Small hits of a fraction of the stake are the norm between feature landings. That’s the shape of a high volatility game with a modest top symbol.

Free Spins at the Hotel

3 or more SCATTER symbols anywhere on the grid trigger the free spins round. The game uses a different scatter icon in the base game and the bonus, so the two are easy to tell apart at a glance, which is a small courtesy on a grid this size. The award scales with the number of scatters that land:

• 3 scatters – 8 free spins
• 4 scatters – 12 free spins
• 5 scatters – 16 free spins
• 6 scatters – 20 free spins

The round retriggers on the same ladder. If 3, 4, 5 or 6 scatters land during the free spins, they award 8, 12, 16 or 20 extra spins respectively. There’s no separate mini-game, no picking screen and no wheel: the scatters land, the spins land, and the round continues.

Since the Yeti Wild keeps his trick-activating role in the bonus, stacked wilds from the bungee feature can land while the free spins clock runs. That combination, a retriggered round and a lucky bungee jump together, is the ceiling of what Hotel Yeti Way can do. A 6-scatter retrigger on a full board of ways is where the game’s real potential sits, and the ladder’s top-heavy design means the difference between a modest round and a long one comes down almost entirely to scatter count.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 6.4/10

This is a holiday slot that lets its mascot do all the entertaining, and that’s the one reason to pick it: a yeti choosing between bungee jumping, surfing and scuba diving on every landing gives the base game a variety most 6×4 ways slots never attempt. The free spins ladder is the best thing here. A round that retriggers on the same scale it started on, 20 more spins for a full set of scatters, can run a very long way past its opening count.

The cost of the holiday is real, though. At 94.24% the RTP takes back more than the theme gives, and a paytable topped by a 3x six-of-a-kind wild means the gaps between the yeti’s appearances are thin going. That’s the price of admission, and it’s not a small one.

For players after something light, funny and undemanding on a sun lounger, the room is comfortable and the host is good company. Anyone who needs a rich paytable or a generous return to enjoy a slot should book elsewhere. The yeti, at least, is having a wonderful time.

Hotel Yeti Way FAQs

• What is the RTP of Hotel Yeti Way?

  Hotel Yeti Way has an RTP of 94.24%, which sits below the typical range for modern online slots.
• Is Hotel Yeti Way high volatility?

  Yes, Hotel Yeti Way is a high volatility slot, so wins tend to be less frequent and the feature landings carry most of the game’s potential.
• What is the grid size of Hotel Yeti Way?

  Hotel Yeti Way uses a 6×4 grid with ways-based wins, so matching symbols on adjacent reels from the left count towards a win.
• When is Hotel Yeti Way released?

  Hotel Yeti Way’s release date is 15 July 2021.
• Who makes Hotel Yeti Way?

  Hotel Yeti Way is made by Play’n GO.
• What does the Yeti Wild do in Hotel Yeti Way?

  The Yeti Wild substitutes for all symbols except the scatter. Whenever it lands, it activates one of three random base game features: Bungee Jumping, Surfing or Scuba Diving. Bungee Jumping can create between 1 and 4 stacked wilds on the reels.
• How do you trigger free spins in Hotel Yeti Way?

  Landing 3 or more scatter symbols triggers the free spins round. 3 scatters award 8 free spins, 4 award 12, 5 award 16 and 6 award 20.
• Can free spins retrigger in Hotel Yeti Way?

  Yes. If 3, 4, 5 or 6 scatters land during the free spins, they award 8, 12, 16 or 20 extra spins respectively, on the same ladder as the original trigger.