Cygnus – Latin for swan, is the constellation in the northern sky at about 21 hours right ascension and 40 degrees north in declination. The brightest star in the constellation is named Deneb – the 19th brightest star in the sky. Something tells me they didn’t judge that by eye! It’s also the name of a series of slot machines from industry stalwarts ELK Studios – and a rather successful one at that. This third entry, Cygnus 3, is likely to be popular, but does it deserve to be? The usual ELK Studios below-average RTP of 94% once again rears its ugly head here, but we do at least get a 100,000x maximum jackpot to balance things out a little – double that of Cygnus 2. The third entry in the series shares the same six ‘reel’ layout and plays similarly, so if you’re a member of the so-called ‘Cygnus Society’, you’ll be instantly at home.
So, considering we still have 4,096 to 262,144 pay ways and an identical symbol set, you wouldn’t be blamed for asking – what’s changed? The big addition in Cygnus 3 is the new Cygnus wheel, which replaces the standard bonus option in the X-iter bonus buy menu. This is also what you’ll see if you trigger the bonus naturally – the wheel contains some small cash prizes of up to 15x the total bet, a couple of free spins segments, and three all-new jackpots dubbed Sky, Star, and Cygnus. The Cygnus jackpot is worth a cool 100,000x your total bet, making your chances of ever seeing it a true rarity – I’d recommend buying a telescope if your dream is to catch a glimpse of the eponymous star!
That’s the introductory business out of the way – if you’re ready for the next step on this great galactic adventure from ELK Studios, go ahead and fire up our free demo slot of Cygnus 3 – it’s available to play below:
| Provider | Elk Studios |
| Reels | 6 |
| Rows | 4 |
| Paylines | 262,144 |
| Bonus Rounds | 2 |
| Bet Range | 0.20 - 100 |
| Volatility | High |
| Max Win | 100,000x |
| Bonus Buy | Yes |
| RTP | 94.00% |
| Our Rating | 7.3 |
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Cygnus 3 Demo Slot
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Cygnus 3 Slot Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols
Whilst the second Cygnus game marked quite a significant departure from the original, this next sequel is much more of an iterative improvement over its predecessor. The symbol sets look to be identical as far as I can tell – they’ve been redrawn, for sure, but they’re all undoubtedly the same things – symbols of the Zodiac, celestial objects and the like. That’s not such a bad thing, but it always strikes me as a little bit lazy if there isn’t a significant change to how the game plays either. That seems to be the case here – the variance has been cranked up to 11 by replacing the standard bonus round with a wheel that might only chuck you 10x your bet – a real bummer if you’ve been waiting hundreds of spins to see a bonus round. Nevertheless, the ‘Puyo Puyo’ style bubble-popping gameplay will likely attract as many new fans as old ones, which will surely satisfy our friends over at ELK Studios.
Considering the small scale of the changes made to Cygnus 3, it shouldn’t come as any surprise to learn that the paytable remains identical between this machine and its predecessor. The sun remains the top symbol with a payout of 15x the total bet for a full payway of six of a kind. That’s a major outlier here, however, as the Sagittarian lion drops significantly to just 1.2x for all six symbols, followed by only 0.8x for six Aries rams. Six Scorpio symbols will net you 0.4x your bet, after which just three geometric shapes act as the game’s low-paying symbols with shared payouts of 0.2x for a six-symbol combination.
Another common bugbear of mine with ELK’s slots is their tendency to drastically and arbitrarily limit your wager selection options – minimum/maximum bets of €0.20 and €100.00 are fine, but with only a handful of options in between the two extremes, you could easily find yourself forced to play higher – or lower – than you might otherwise like.
Base Game & Modifiers
Despite the unusual offset layout of the Cygnus 3 playfield, this is, for the most part, a relatively standard video slot. After you first load the game, only four rows will appear on the playfield – hitting winning combinations will increase the grid’s height, creating additional chances to win big. Payway-based slots only require you to hit matching symbols in adjacent columns – something you’re almost certainly already used to, but the offset nature of the circular symbols used in these games can make things seem confusing to the uninitiated eye.
Multiplier Wild Symbols
One other relatively small change in this update to the Cygnus franchise is that the multiplier wilds, which would previously increase in value as they made their way towards the leftmost column, will now upgrade whenever they form part of a winning combination instead. This is a welcome change in my eyes, particularly during the bonus round, where wild symbols are persistent in between free spins.
Cygnus 3 Slot Bonus Features
Triggering the regular bonus mode requires you to get a single bonus scatter symbol over to the leftmost column – this might sound easy, but it’s deceptively tricky! Whenever winning combinations are removed from the playfield, the remaining symbols will fall to the left or right depending on which column has the lowest number of remaining symbols within it – the game always seeks to find an equilibrium, so falling symbols will always target the column with the smallest stack. As ever, you’ll need to be lucky!
Cygnus Wheel
When the bonus is triggered in Cygnus 3, you won’t automatically receive a set of free drops as you would in Cygnus 2 – instead, you’ll be given one free spin on the Cygnus wheel. This is that hyper-variance that I mentioned earlier in full effect – many players will have to hit the poor segments of the wheel to fund just one ‘Cygnus’ jackpot, after all!
- Cash Prizes: 5x, 10x, or 15x Bet
- Free Drops: 5, 7, or 10
- Super Free Drops: 5 or 7
- Jackpot: Sky (1,000x), Star (10,000x), or Cygnus (100,000x)
X-iter Bonus Buy
As always, ELK Studios trademark X-iter bonus buy facility is available – assuming you are in a permitted region! Loading the game directly from the United Kingdom, where I live, causes the entire menu to fail to display – some casinos will permit you to use a VPN to access this functionality, but be sure to check with them before trying this – less scrupulous operators may choose to use such things as a reason for non-payment, should you win.
- Bonus Hunt (2x Bet) – Effectively just a bonus bet option, for double the price per spin, you can have ‘more than’ double the odds of triggering a bonus round. It would be nice if the exact odds were specified – don’t you think?
- Multiplier Wild (10x Bet) – Guarantees at least one multiplier wild will fall on the next drop. Note that this does not guarantee a win, nor does it guarantee that the multiplier will exceed the 10x cost of purchasing this option.
- Rising Multiplier Wilds (25x Bet) – Will cause any multiplier wild symbols to increase in value whenever they form part of a winning combination. Note that there’s no guarantee that any multiplier wilds even fall onto the playfield after selecting this option – in my opinion, that makes this a bit of a raw deal!
- Cygnus Wheel (100x Bet) – Guarantees a spin on the regular Cygnus Wheel – all options listed in the previous section will be present, except for the super bonus segments.
- Super Cygnus Wheel (500x Bet) – A true gamble if ever there was one. This won’t guarantee you any free drops, even at the eye-watering price of 500x the current spin cost. I tried this option a dozen times as I was writing this review and regularly ended up with just 15x my stake back. Even when I did manage to hit some super free drops, I never managed to exceed the 500x buy-in – use with caution!
Pros
- The Cygnus games are classics – this one doesn’t change that fact.
- Immaculately presented, and the ethereal soundtrack shouldn’t have you reaching for the mute button - a rarity in online slots.
- Big, big jackpot – 100,000x is quite frankly huge.
Cons
- Lower than average RTP of just 94%
- Those huge jackpots have to be paid for, and your wallet will cry out in pain when you inevitably make a few contributions to the pot!
Final Thoughts
I’d expected a little more from the third instalment of one of ELK Studios' premiere franchises, but I guess the famous adage holds as true as ever – if it isn’t broke, why fix it? However, for my money, I think I would rather stick to Cygnus 2 – even a doubled jackpot can’t compensate for the pain of hitting that 5x bet segment of the Cygnus wheel!
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