The action in Pollen Nation revolves around bees, the entire slot being dedicated to these little hard workers. Microgaming is the developer responsible for this title, a developer with a lot of experience, which in this case offers a design which is a bit too much into caricature territory for my taste. The choice of theme is not 100% original, but it’s not that common among slot developers either, so there is plenty of room for a well designed game.
The game has 5 reels & 25 bet lines, so it’s quite average in that regard for a slot machine. Among its features you will find a scatter symbol, a wild and a bonus game. Its biggest prize is worth $30,000.
Features of Pollen Nation
The game has among its features the wild symbol, the scatter symbol and a bonus game. The free spins and the multipliers are missing from this particular title unfortunately.
The Wild Queen is the first feature we’re going to talk about. It’s a symbol that will either substitute for other symbols, or will try to form its own combinations of up to five symbols. In order for its own combos to form, and award the slot’s biggest prizes of up to 6,000x, you need between 2 and 5 Wild Queens on an active line, going from left to right. When it doesn’t do that, it tries to contribute to other combinations, by substituting for the symbol that is needed in its place.
We have the Scatter Bee next, with the image of the bee that is showing off his stinger. The only role this scatter has is to offer you a prize, the requirement being for up to five of these Bees to be present at the same time, no matter where they’re placed on the reels. Payouts vary from 5x the triggering bet for three symbols, to 20x for four and 80x the bet for five.
Babee Bonus Game
The Babee bonus is going to start up when the Baby Bee symbol appears scattered on the game’s reels, a minimum of three times.
You are taken to a new screen when that happens, where you are shown a honeycomb structure. You have to pick honey filled spots, and each one will reveal another prize. The game continues until you find one of the Stop signs, at which point you collect your winnings and you return to the base game.
Betting options and jackpots
The line wagers use a maximum of 10 coins, but you can get away with using just 1 if you want to. You can also choose not to select all the lines, if you want to keep your costs down. The coins have values within a range of $0.01 to $0.50. With up to 10 per line, you have $5 line bets and $125 total bets when all of them are used.
The wild symbol promises rewards of up to 60,000 coins, or 6,000x. The coins going up to $0.50, their total value will be up to $30,000, no more. The bonus game offers up to $16,125 cash (32,250 coins).
Design and symbols
The game’s design, though very bee themed, is a bit too much towards caricature when the characters are concerned. They’re made to look more like characters and humanized in order to fit that role, but some of their characteristics have been exaggerated in the process and the effect is not a pleasant one. Still, it does look like a bee and honey themed slot machine, so at least Microgaming accomplished that much. You also get only symbols that have a theme connection, they didn’t include playing cards in this case, and that’s always a plus.
Symbols: Queen Bee (wild, 6,000x), Baby Bee (bonus), Scatter Bee (80x bet, scatter), Guard Bee (1,000x), Nurse Bee (800x), Worker Bee 9600x), Royal Jelly (200x), Pure Honey (175x), Honeycomb (150x), Pollen Puffs (100x) and Bees Wax (50x).
Is It Worth Playing?
The design, though not great, will at least make you smile, so it’s not a total loss. The payouts are good enough and there are some decent features, but there aren’t as many of them as in other slots.
You will find Pollen Nation at any online casino which chooses to use software from Microgaming, playable either for free or for real money.
