Hugo Carts

Hugo Carts Slot Review

A lantern swings over a timber frame, teal crystal juts from blue rock and something furnace-orange burns away in a side tunnel. It’s a warm, hand-painted kind of underground, and unusually for a ways-to-win slot, almost nothing that happens here comes from the reels themselves – it comes from three characters with fixed addresses. Hugo Carts is Play’n GO‘s whole-troll-family mining outing, running on a 5×4 grid with 1024 fixed pay ways, an RTP of 96.23% and high volatility.

It sits in the same stable as Hugo Legacy and the studio’s best-known title, Book of Dead, though the ways-to-win setup and the character mechanics give this one its own shape. Down here, the whole family digs.

The Base Game

Five reels and four rows give every symbol on the middle reels plenty of neighbours, and wins form on adjacent reels from the left. There are 1024 fixed pay ways in the default setup. When symbol multipliers land, the number of ways can rise above that, since a multiplied symbol counts as several of itself.

The mechanics around those ways are straightforward. Wins on multiple ways in one round are added together, and anything won in features or from scatters is added on top of way wins. Only the highest win is paid per winning symbol combination, so a stacked set of the same symbol doesn’t pay twice. All winning combinations are settled at the end of the round.

The wild is a golden nugget, and it stands in for other paying symbols. It doesn’t appear on its own in regular spins; Hugo throws it onto the reels during his feature, which is covered below. For a slot whose whole cast lives on the middle reels, that’s a sensible division of labour: the characters handle the fireworks, the nuggets handle the substitutions.

The characters themselves, Hugo, Hugolina and Scylla, work the features rather than the paytable, leaving the reels to the rest of the cast.

Bets are set in the menu before a round starts, and the bet can’t be changed while a round is running. Free spins play at the same bet as the round that triggered them.

Auto Play runs consecutive rounds automatically at the current settings, and switches itself off depending on your settings or if the balance drops too low. Fast Play is there for anyone who likes their mine shifts uninterrupted.

Re-Spin

Three characters have fixed homes on the reels, and any single one of them, or any combination, is enough to trigger a Re-Spin. Each brings a different effect to the party:

• Hugolina lands on reel two and adds two to five symbol multipliers
• Hugo lands on reel three and drops two to five golden nugget wilds
• Scylla lands on reel four and casts four to nine mystery symbols

The multipliers run from x2 up to x10, and it’s these that can push the ways above 1024, since each multiplied symbol counts as several instances. A Hugolina re-spin with a few high-value multipliers attached is where the base game’s bigger results come from. Hugo’s wilds do the more conventional work of completing near-miss combinations.

Four to nine of them at once can turn a scatter-shot grid into several matching ways in a hurry, and because they settle after the reels stop, there’s a beat of waiting before the reveal.

Two or three characters arriving together stack their effects on the same re-spin, which is the feature at its best. It can’t be re-triggered, though, so what lands on that single respin is what you get.

Free Spins

Dynamite is the scatter, and it pays out in free spins rather than cash. The tiers step up one scatter at a time:

• 3 dynamite scatters award 7 free spins
• 4 dynamite scatters award 9 free spins
• 5 dynamite scatters award 11 free spins

Before the round begins, one of the three characters is picked at random, and that character plays out their feature on every free spin, whether it’s Hugolina’s multipliers, Hugo’s wilds or Scylla’s mystery symbols. Where the base game Re-Spin gives you a single shot at a character effect, free spins give you seven, nine or eleven in a row with the same character behind all of them.

The character you’re dealt shapes the whole round. A Hugolina round layers multiplier on multiplier across the spins; a Hugo round drops fresh wilds every spin; a Scylla round turns big patches of the grid into one symbol at a time. Three different games, and you don’t get to choose.

There’s a helping hand on the way in, too. Don Croco can barge in on any base game spin and throw two dynamite scatters onto the reels, which can turn a dead spin into a trigger. Two scatters landing naturally plus a Croco visit is all it takes to reach the lowest tier.

Re-Triggers

Landing three or more scatters during the round re-triggers it and selects another character at random. Each re-trigger unlocks someone new until all three are in play, and once the full cast is assembled, no further re-triggers are available.

The round is capped by character count rather than spin count, and the endgame is a bonus with every character firing on every spin. The multipliers do the heavy lifting on payout potential, and a full cast stacking their effects is where the bigger results live.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.7/10

Playing this is a bit like supervising a family shift down the mine: the reels mostly wait while Hugolina, Hugo and Scylla do the actual work, and the one reason to pick it is that trio. Nobody else builds a bonus round around which troll turned up.

The best thing here is the free spins design. Being dealt one character for the whole round means every bonus plays differently, and a re-trigger that adds the rest of the cast gives the endgame a real sense of arrival.

The worst thing is the ceiling you can see coming: the multipliers stop at x10, so no matter how the effects stack, the arithmetic has a hard lid on it. The endgame of a full cast firing on every spin is the high point, and it never runs as far as the building suggests it might.

It’s a comfortable, well-drawn game for people who like their features frequent and their cast familiar – fans of Hugo’s other outings will settle straight in. Anyone hunting a stated jackpot should keep walking down the tunnel. The lanterns stay lit either way.

Hugo Carts FAQs

• What is the RTP of Hugo Carts?

  Hugo Carts runs at an RTP of 96.23%.
• Is Hugo Carts high volatility?

  Yes, Hugo Carts is a high volatility slot, so wins can be spread out and feature-heavy sessions are the norm.
• How does the Re-Spin feature trigger?

  Each of the three characters has a fixed reel: Hugolina on reel two, Hugo on reel three and Scylla on reel four. Any single character or any combination of them arriving on their home reels triggers a Re-Spin, which can’t itself be re-triggered.
• What do the characters do in Hugo Carts?

  Hugolina adds two to five symbol multipliers worth up to x10, Hugo drops two to five golden nugget wilds, and Scylla casts four to nine mystery symbols.
• How do you trigger free spins in Hugo Carts?

  Three, four or five dynamite scatter symbols award 7, 9 or 11 free spins respectively. Don Croco can also appear randomly on any base game spin and throw two dynamite scatters onto the reels to help you get there.
• Can free spins be re-triggered?

  Yes. Landing three or more scatters during the round selects another character at random, until all three have been obtained. Once the full cast is unlocked, no further re-triggers are available.
• How many paylines does Hugo Carts have?

  There are 1024 fixed pay ways, paying left to right on adjacent reels. Symbol multipliers can dynamically raise the number of ways above that figure.
• Who makes Hugo Carts?

  Hugo Carts is made by Play’n GO, the studio behind the wider Hugo series including Hugo Legacy.