Pollen Nation
The wombat says: Well Wombat Fans, there’s nothing we like more than seeing the creative lengths that those slot wizards will go to in order to come up with original themes and symbols for games.
And Pollen Nation from Microgaming, the people behind the Retro Reels Extreme Heat slot, is one of those releases. This buzzastic slot is themed around the somewhat underrated life of bees. But will this game be sweet as a pot of honey?
Or sting us right in the ass when we’re least expecting it? Let’s get involved!
Game Play
Pollen Nation is a 5 reel slot with 3 rows and 25 paylines. It’s a bright yellow coloured assault on the eyes (there’s more of the yellow stuff here than on the Golden Mane slot machine, and that’s saying something) and comes complete with some fairly basic graphics.
Your reels are packed with all manner of bee-related stuff and include; a jar of honey, some royal jelly, a bowl of Pollen Puffs cereal, some honeycombs, a load of beeswax, a soldier bee who is brandishing a spear and shield, a female doctor bee in a white coat, a worker bee who looks very harassed indeed and of course, the majestic Queen Bee who acts as the Wild in the game. She will substitute for all symbols on the reels other than the Scatter, to help you make up more winning payline combos. And, as you’d probably expect, and this right Royal symbol pays up to 60,000 coins if you land all 5 of them across the reels.
It’s all very cute- reminds me of the Love Bugs slot in many ways, just with more honey!
It’s nice to see that the usual boring playing card symbols are absent from this slot. We do prefer it when the reels are covered in theme-related icons! Take note Games Makers!
Free Spins Round
Sadly for all of us there are no Free Spins on offer in this game Wombat Fans. Still, you will need to keep your eyes open for the Scatter symbols anyway. As, if you manage to land 3x or more of these Baby Bee Icons, you’ll enter a different kind of bonus round altogether.
Babee Bonus
Welcome to the weird (and quite frankly wonderful) Babee Bonus where a possible 32,500-coin bonus can be yours. Yeeeehhhhhaaa! It’s basically a Pick ‘Em kind of extra feature game, and your mission here is choose chunks of honeycomb to fill up the babee’s bottle with.
Keep picking up small and not so small instant cash wins until you come across the STOP icon. This signals that the game is over and you’ll return to the base game.
Conclusion
Fans of no-nonsense slots should get a buzz (ha ha) out of the simple gameplay on offer here in Pollen Nation slot. But there’s not too much on offer here to keep you interested here after you’ve tested out the Babee Bonus a few times. Ok, the 60,000-coin possible jackpot certainly beefs up the slot proceedings but the bonus round is a bit on the average side when you compare it with other Microgaming’s other releases ( most of which have a Free Spins round as standard). All in all, it might not be enough to keep the slot experts amongst you buzzing…