Who’s the king of your local pub? Is it the guy who can drink the most at the bar on a Sunday after polishing off three of their finest roast dinners? Or is it the guy who controls the jukebox night after night, constantly playing the worst possible “hits” from the 2000s? Whoever he may be, I’m sure you will be pleased to learn that he doesn’t appear in Pragmatic Play’s Pub Kings online slot! This 20-pay line machine offers an RTP of 96.08% – reducing slightly to 96.05% when the bonus buy facility is used – whilst its top prize of 5,000x the player’s stake is a little less than stellar if I’m being completely honest…
Compared with much of this developer’s recent output, Pub Kings is possibly one of Pragmatic Play’s simpler games. Each reel has an associated ‘pub king’, which is extremely important in the games bonus round. The way this works is quite unlikely anything I’ve seen before, however – the free spins technically amount to a drinking contest whereby the king of reel one can pay you the highest return of 5,000x your total bet, whilst the king of reel five clearly can’t handle his baijiu and can only offer up to 500x your stake back in winnings. If you want to find out what that mode is all about right away, you can check it out using the bonus buy facility at a cost of 100x the normal price per spin.
Returning to our original question, do any of these friendly-looking gentlemen represent your local pub king in any way? Or perhaps the solitary female who oversees the fifth reel? Fire up our free demo slot of Pub Kings, and look – who knows, if you let your local pub king know that his likeness is being used, perhaps he’ll cut you in on the spoils?! Ha! Likely story!
| Provider | Pragmatic Play |
| Reels | 5 |
| Rows | 3 |
| Paylines | 20 |
| Bonus Rounds | 1 |
| Bet Range | 0.20 - 100 |
| Volatility | High |
| Max Win | 5,000x |
| Bonus Buy | Yes |
| RTP | 96.08% |
| Our Rating | 6.0 |
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Pub Kings Demo Slot
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Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols
Did you ever play The Secret of Monkey Island as a child? The story of Guybrush Threepwood trying to make his way from a bumbling islander into the world’s most feared pirate was as unique and interesting as it was compelling, and I can’t help but wonder if Pragmatic Play shared my love for the game after looking their Pirates Pub online slot. Perhaps not, though – the place in question where the ‘grog’ was served would probably have been referred to as a tavern at the time, so perhaps I should be crediting Snowborn and their excellent Tippy Tavern machine? Whatever the case, I’m sorry to say that I feel this game looks much worse than anything else I’ve mentioned in this paragraph – the jazzy take on the olde English music really isn’t to my tastes either.
On the plus side, though, this game certainly isn’t all bad – for a 20-payline machine, the highest-paying symbols return of 150x the total bet seriously isn’t too bad at all. The remaining Pub Kings offer payouts of 100x, 75x, 50x or 25x on reels two to five, respectively, so there’s quite a spread even during the base game as far as how much you can win by hitting these symbols. As for the low pays, we’ve got five Aces or Kings at 15x or five Queens/Jacks/Tens at 10x each – nothing too special there, I’m afraid.
Betting range? I could pretty much copy and paste this from other Pragmatic Play games at this point, I suspect, and it would typically be extremely accurate! The minimum/maximum permitted bets are €0.20 and €100.00 per spin, and you have a huge amount of flexibility between the two extremes as well.
Base Game & Modifiers
You would be quickly forgiven for believing there is very little of special note concerning this online slot, but hold up for just a moment – there’s one little treat in store that I have yet to mention! Before we get to that, let’s just touch on the basics – the game uses a standard 5×3 video slot layout, and the 20 fixed paylines are also very standard for his type of machine and reel configuration.
Random Awards
This is the crazy part about Pub Kings – I initially thought these prizes only applied to the bonus round, but it later turned out that you can win these during the base game too! The way this works is that when two scatter symbols land, a random award from the first five levels will be paid out from a random reel, providing that it contains its corresponding pub king. Take note of these prize numbers now too, as they are also important during the bonus round:
- Reel One: 10x, 25x, 125x, 250x, 600x, (1000x, 5000x)
- Reel Two: 6x, 15x, 45x, 200x, 400x, (800x, 2500x)
- Reel Three: 4x, 10x, 30x, 150x, 300x, (600x, 1500x)
- Reel Four: 3x, 8x, 25x, 60x, 150x, (300x, 750x)
- Reel Five: 2x, 6x, 20x, 50x, 125x, (250x, 500x)
Note that the prizes shown in brackets are only available during the bonus round.
Pub Kings Slot Bonus Features
Speaking of that bonus round, the only way to access this feature outside the bonus buy facility is by hitting all three scatter symbols on reels one, three, and five.
Free Spins
Every bonus round begins with ten free spins – during those spins, any pub kings who land on the reels will be added to a meter displayed at the top of the corresponding reel. You’ll need to collect symbols to progress to level 2, after which only three further symbols are required to progress a symbol to the next level – up to a maximum of 7.
The disappointing part about this is that it is not the symbol with the highest level that will determine your prize – no, it’s the number of beers collected from other symbols which land on the reels during the bonus round. As such, I found myself with huge multipliers on reels one, two, three, and five, and yet reel four won out with a measly 8x win – sorry, but this seems very unfair to me Pragmatic Play!
Bonus Buy
I probably haven’t done a good job of making the bonus round sound appealing, but if you do want to skip directly to it, you can do so at a cost of 100x the normal price per spin.
Pros
- Big payouts for the pub king symbols – even during the base game.
- Bonus round has a tonne of potential – the way you reach it seems unfair though, so this is something of a con as well as a pro!
- The ability to hit a level 5 random prize just from landing two scatters in the base game makes every spin exciting.
Cons
- The artwork could certainly be better – this game certainly wasn’t worked on by Pragmatic Play’s best.
- The winner of the bonus round should be the column with the highest level – where do the beers come into it? That’s a cheap trick if I ever saw one PP!
Pub Kings Slot Review Final Thoughts
Ah, Pragmatic Play, so close, yet so far – a game which could have been a real gem but messes things up with some questionable decisions around the bonus round. Give it a try by all means, but I’m confident many players will be just as frustrated as I was when they see those huge multipliers do absolutely nothing, feature after feature.
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