Eager Beavers Slot Review

30/08/2024 | Categories: Thunderkick Slots | Published by: Joe | Last updated: 30/08/2024

We have been seeing Thunderkick’s name in our news feed quite a bit in recent times. In August 2024, this software game provider expanded its reach into Colombia and Ontario. Before this, at the start of the summer, this company entered the US market via a High 5 Casino agreement, making its products available at social gaming sites.

In the past, we have mentioned that we should review more of this company’s releases, as we have only covered two at this point. Eager Beavers, released on August 21st, 2024, will be the third Thunderkick title we have scanned. The studio’s product owner, Mike Collins stated in this developer’s press release for this game that he is proud of the beautiful and whimsical environment they have created in this visually captivating slot. We will be the judge of that, Mister Collins.

Looking at the stats, Eager Beavers is doing respectable business in various regions, even managing to rank in the top one hundred most-played gambling product standings in Finland in the first week of availability. It is pulling in decent numbers elsewhere also, hitting the one hundred to three hundred range in various developed markets. Below, we tell you what we think of it.

Theme & Design

We have to be honest. One of the main reasons we are reviewing this spinner is that we just saw the silent comedy – Hundreds of Beavers and were in the mood for anything beaver-related. So, when we noticed that this game had gotten released by Thunderkick, we saw that as a sign.

Interestingly, there are almost no online slots that feature these creatures as a central motif. We did some research into this matter, as we could not think of any off the top of our heads. Our exploration yielded essentially no finds, as Dam Rich by Amaya, a 2015 reel spinner, was the only product we could discover that heavily included beavers. Maybe Yukon Gold from Crucible Gaming can qualify. However, this one only has them as a symbol, not a central element.

For those few reading unfamiliar with beavers, they are the second largest rodents on the planet, and they are herbivores that eat tree bark and underwater plants. Of course, they are famous for the complex dams they build, which serve as their shelters.

As noted, the presentation here is indeed whimsical. The setting is a large dam with a waterfall in the middle, which is the backdrop for the game symbols. The visuals here are cartoony and pretty basic. They get accompanied by a light guitar theme, like something you would hear someone living in a cabin in the Great North-West play at home. You get cute happy-beaver sound effects (think Alvin and the Chipmunks) on winning combos and some camera movements on game actions that add a sense of dynamism to your Eager Beavers gameplay.

The button configuration here is straightforward. You have the spin, auto-spin, feature buy, and bet selector buttons in the bottom right corner of your screen, and in the top one on this site sit the mute, info, and settings icons.

Specs & Gameplay

The number of winning ways in Eager Beavers grows from sixty-four to seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy-six. How is this possible? It is on account of a gameplay mechanic that drops two to five symbols per reel (six) in each spin. But, the row height in this slot can grow up to ten, which opens one million winning ways. The variance setting of this game is high, and the max win stands at x10,000, on a betting range that starts at $0.10 and goes up to $100 per gaming round. Know that the odds of you landing the max win here are one in twenty-two million.

The RTP of this Thunderkick creation is a disappointing 94.29%, which we find surprising, given that most high variance reel-spinning games these days have RTPs of around the average of 96%.

Combos featuring at least three matching symbols that land on adjacent columns payout prizes in this game. When that happens, reward-producing tokens get removed, and new symbols drop into their place, with an additional symbol added to the top of each reel. That is a cascading system that expands the row height here up to ten.

You get four low-pay card royals, producing wins of x0.4 for six-of-a-kind combinations, four fruit gems that deliver prizes of x0.5 when six identical ones fall onto the waterfall layout, and four beavers that supply rewards from x1 to x5 when six of these bad boys hit on a win-way.

The W is the wild of Eager Beavers, and it not only substitutes pay tokens but gives away wins of x5 when six land on a bet way.

Bonus Features

Special Wild Features. These activate when a Special Wild is part of a winning combo, and when this occurs, a respective Wild feature triggers. The Wild Splash gets represented by a fish token. It arbitrarily picks a symbol, transforming all like it into Wilds. The Wild Fall gets represented by a log, causing a random number of Wilds to drop in view. These may show up in stacks.

The Wild Rapids feature, a distinct one, activates randomly, placing random Wilds onto the game layout. These may also appear stacked.

Now, we move on to the Eager Beavers Cash Bonus Game, which you enter through three landed scatters. These are golden nuggets with the word Bonus overlaid. Once activated, the regular reels get replaced with special ones that contain cash values up to x100, along with Collect, Super Collect, Upgrade, Super Upgrade, Build, and Super Build symbols. The Collect/Super Collect gathers all values. The Upgrade/Super Upgrade ones multiply values by x2, x3, x4, or x5. The Build/Super Build ones increase the height of their reel or all reels up to a maximum of ten.

You can buy the Cash Bonus Game for a price of x100, and be aware that this game has three Bet+ options. The regular one costs x1.3 and doubles the chances of triggering the bonus game. The Plus one comes with a price tag of x2.2 and increases your chances five times over, and the Ultra one does this ten times over, costing x3.5.

GOSU Verdict

Did we like Eager Beavers as much as we had hoped we would? No. The main reason was that we played about a hundred spins and did not activate any feature, and around 90% of our gaming rounds were losing ones. Most of our gambling sessions here played out like this, so we assume that it is super hard to trigger a bonus mode here without help or you paying for it. Even when we got entry into the Cash Bonus, things did not work out well for us. We read about similar experiences by other players. So, this is a very volatile game whose specs and offered engagement level do not do enough to justify us telling you to play it. The presentation is cutesy, but we would suggest you do not fall for it.