Karate Pig Pokies
If we can have a panda doing Kung Fu in the movies, then why not a pig that does Karate in a pokie? That’s exactly what we have with Karate Pig, a 5-reel game that has bonus features like stacked wilds, free spins and a series of achievements to unlock, leading to a Final Showdown.
It’s part of the Microgaming range and is in the quality cartoon style that many of their games feature. Possibly inspired by the Kung Fu Panda movies, the reels are filled with cute characters like cats, beautiful geisha-pigs and a Buddha in bright colours, giving it an appealing design to go with the appealing features.
A Pig in a Pokie
Karate Pig has 40 paylines, with players able to wager from as little as 0.40 per spin up to a maximum of 20.00, which is fairly low and makes this a game for casual players only, not high rollers looking to score some big wins. There’s a maximum jackpot of 800,000 coins however, so players could still walk away with a tidy sum in their accounts.
There’s the hint of an Oriental town behind the reels, while the payline indicators on each side are topped off with pagoda-style roofs, but the action is definitely focused on the reels, and a look at the paytable details what each of these fun symbols will be worth when they land in the right places.
Wins are created by 3 or more of the same symbol landing on adjacent reels, across a payline running from the left side. All lines are activated and the prizes are multiples of the value of a coin. The bonsai garden pays 3, 10, or 45 coins when 3, 4 or 5 of them land across a line, while payouts get progressively larger as we go through symbols like the market, a bear, cat and a mean-looking buffalo.
The geisha-pig is worth 20, 50 or 100 coins for 3, 4 or 5 on a line, while Karate Pig himself pays 50, 250 or 750 coins. Any symbols that make up winning combinations will do a little dance in celebration.
Karate Pig
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Pigging out on Features
Players who enjoy bonus features will find their trough overflowing here.
The Karate Pig logo is a wild symbol which is valued at 10 coins when only 2 land on a line, and 1000 for 5 of them, while it acts as any others, with the exception of the scatters, if doing so will complete a winning combination. It will also be stacked on the reels, improving the odds of it making up a win.
A gold coin scatter symbol will trigger a free spins game when it lands on reels 1 and 5 at once. 15 spins will then play out, with any wins being doubled throughout them. These can be re-triggered by the gold coin again, with a further 15 spins added on to the end of any still to play out.
The highlight of this pokie however, has to be the Karate Bonus feature that gets triggered by 3, 4 or 5 of the bonus symbols landing anywhere on the reels at once. Each time the bonus is played, players collect a different coloured Karate belt, and once 7 have been won, the Final Showdown begins.
To earn a belt, players can choose to enter either the Pork Chop Bonus or Hammer Bonus. In the Pork Chop game, they select 3 of the barrels hanging above our piggy hero, who will then Karate chop them to reveal prizes hidden within.
The Hammer game is a similar pick a prize type round, where the pig chooses which taro (a type of vegetable if you’re wondering), to bash and finding prizes as he does so.
Once 7 belts have been collected, the next time the bonus is triggered, players enter the Final Showdown where they have 3 chances to defeat the big, bad buffalo character, winning some generous prizes when they do. Before each round, they pick punch combinations to use against him, and once the showdown is complete, players go back to the beginning of the Karate Bonus and have to earn their belts again.
A Game to Snout About?
Karate Pig looks great and plays great, with some outstanding bonus features and a fun theme. Nice animations, a quality design and some decent rewards are all available in the base game, but the bonus rounds are really what this pokie is about, and they are both enjoyable and potentially rewarding.
Any downsides? Well, there are no scatter wins, and no option to activate just a few lines to try the game out with, but the positives far outweigh the negatives here.