Primal Hunt

Primal Hunt Slot Review

Deep inside a firelit cave, ochre lions and spear-carrying hunters are painted straight onto the rock – and the reels spin in front of them like they were always part of the wall. Primal Hunt earns that setting with a game this old-fashioned underneath: an 80-payline line-payer that trusts one scatter, one bonus round and a stack of multiplied wilds to carry the whole hunt.

It’s Betsoft in painterly form, and the studio has form on this terrain with Primal Wilderness, Safari Sam 2 and Jungle Stripes. The numbers hold up their end too: a 96.1% RTP, mid-to-high volatility and a 5×4 grid across 80 fixed paylines. Everything above the free spins is patience; everything inside it multiplies.

Reels, Paylines and the Base Game

The game pays left to right across its 5×4 grid, with the highest win per line counting and coinciding wins on different paylines added together. That’s the whole model: no cascades, no collects, no second screen in the base game. What you get instead is a clean line-payer with a generous helping of paylines, which keeps the hit rate lively.

Payouts are recalculated dynamically against whatever stake you’ve set, so the paytable scales with your bet rather than sitting at fixed coin values. Turboplay strips out most of the animations for faster spins, and autoplay can be configured from its own page with start and stop controls. The spin button also works from the spacebar or enter, and holding it triggers a turbo spin.

The Wild substitutes for every symbol except the Hunting Cave Lion, appears only on reels 2, 3 and 4, and vanishes entirely once free spins begin. In the bonus, wilds come back in a stronger form. Contiguous Cave Lion symbols on a single reel stack into one, so a reel filled with lions counts as a single scatter rather than several.

That stacking rule matters more than it looks. A full reel of lions counts as one scatter, so filling reels two, three and four with stacked lions is a three-scatter trigger, not a screen-clearing jackpot of scatters. It keeps the trigger maths honest, and it shapes how you read a lion-heavy spin: the count that matters is reels covered, not symbols landed.

Symbol Values

All values below are multiples of the total bet.

• Lion – 0.1x for two, 0.5x for three, 2.5x for four, 10x for five
• Spear – 0.8x for three, 1.5x for four, 5x for five
• Axe/tool bundle – 0.7x for three, 1x for four, 2.5x for five
• Blue cave painting – 0.5x for three, 0.8x for four, 1.5x for five
• Orange and green cave paintings – 0.4x for three, 0.7x for four, 1.2x for five
• Red cave painting – 0.3x for three, 0.5x for four, 0.8x for five
• A, K, Q – 0.2x for three, 0.3x for four, 0.5x for five
• J – 0.1x for three, 0.2x for four, 0.4x for five

The royal ladder is flat – the jump from J up to A, K and Q is barely a ripple – but the premium end steps up sensibly, with the spear and axe carrying the middle of the table. The lion itself is the only symbol that pays for two, which tells you where the game wants your attention.

The Hunting Cave Lion scatter sits above the entire paytable, paying 8x for three, 16x for four and 96x for five, in any position, with scatter wins added to payline wins. Because it pays from anywhere on the grid rather than along a line, it’s the one symbol you’re always watching for, whatever the reels are doing.

Hunting Cave Lion Free Spins

The scatter does double duty. As well as its instant pay, landing three, four or five Hunting Cave Lions awards the free spins round:

• 3 scatters – 8x instant pay plus 8 free spins
• 4 scatters – 16x instant pay plus 12 free spins
• 5 scatters – 96x instant pay plus 20 free spins

The scatter pay lands first as an instant award, then the round loads with its spin count. Free spins play out at the same bet settings as the spin that triggered them, so there’s no separate stake decision to make once you’re in.

The round can also be retriggered from inside itself by landing more scatters, with the same tiered awards applying again – so a three-scatter retrigger adds another eight spins and another instant pay on top. The base game’s plain wilds are absent here; in their place come multiplier wilds. Everything else is the round you left: the same paytable, the same 80 lines, the same left-to-right wins.

Multiplier Wilds

During free spins, a wild that helps form a winning combination multiplies that line win by x2 or x3, as marked on the symbol itself. The twist is that multiple multiplier wilds in one win multiply together rather than adding: two x3 wilds give 9x, three give 27x. That multiplication is the entire engine of the bonus round’s upside, and it’s the reason a full scatter trigger is worth chasing.

It also changes how you read the reels once you’re inside the round. A line that would be a modest base-game win becomes something else entirely when two or three multiplier wilds land across it. Multiplied wilds still substitute for everything except the Cave Lion, so they’re as flexible as their base-game cousins – just considerably louder.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.2/10

Most of a session here is a wait in a very handsome cave. You spin, the rock art glows, small line wins tick over, and everything builds towards one thing: lions on the reels and multiplied wilds inside the round they open. That single idea is why anybody would pick it – three x3 wilds on one line is 27x before the paytable even gets going.

The strength is that the bonus round isn’t decoration. Multiplier wilds that multiply each other, plus a retrigger that keeps a good round alive, give this game a real ceiling that the plain base game never hints at. And the plainness is the weakness: between lion sightings there’s nothing happening that a hundred other line-payers don’t do, and the wild sits out the round where it would matter most.

It suits players who enjoy a slow-burning, well-drawn line-payer with one sharp trick in the bonus – the patient hunter’s kind of slot. Anyone wanting something happening on every spin will find the cave too quiet. For everyone else, the firelight is warm and the lion is worth the wait.

Primal Hunt FAQs

• What is the RTP of Primal Hunt?

  Primal Hunt runs at an RTP of 96.1%.
• Is Primal Hunt high volatility?

  Primal Hunt is a mid-to-high volatility slot, so wins can be spaced out with the bigger results concentrated in the free spins round.
• How many paylines does Primal Hunt have?

  Primal Hunt is played with 80 fixed paylines on a 5×4 grid, paying left to right.
• When was Primal Hunt released?

  Primal Hunt’s release date is 18 September 2020.
• How do you trigger free spins in Primal Hunt?

  Land three, four or five Hunting Cave Lion scatter symbols anywhere on the reels. You’ll get 8, 12 or 20 free spins respectively, plus an instant scatter pay of 8x, 16x or 96x your total bet.
• Can free spins be retriggered in Primal Hunt?

  Yes. Free spins can be retriggered during the free spins mode by landing more Hunting Cave Lion scatters, with the same tiered spin awards applying again.
• How do the multiplier wilds work in Primal Hunt?

  During free spins, wilds carry an x2 or x3 multiplier and apply it to any winning line they help form. Multiple multiplier wilds multiply together, so three x3 wilds would multiply a win by 27.
• Where do wild symbols appear in Primal Hunt?

  In the base game, plain wilds appear only on reels 2, 3 and 4 and substitute for all symbols except the Hunting Cave Lion. During free spins they’re replaced by multiplier wilds, which also land on those middle reels.