Big Bad Wolf Megaways Demo: Piggy Wilds, Tumbles and Moons

Tumbles, the top row and three pigs waiting to turn

Every spin drops columns of different heights under a sideways top row. The rules screens describe the tumble in three steps: winning symbols are removed, symbols fall in from above, and new wins add to the total. Quickspin's game page adds that the top row refills from right to left. Only the Wolf pays for two of a kind (€2.00 at a €1.00 stake, €50.00 for six); the pigs, the tools and the A, K, Q and J planks pay from three.

The paytable gives the Piggy Wild rule in one line: Piggy symbols become Piggy Wilds every second tumble. The game page adds the order, the first pig after 2 tumbles, the second after 4 and the third after 6, on reels 2 to 5. Piggy Wilds replace everything except the gold hammer-and-wrench Wild and the Moons, and the gold Wild replaces everything except Piggy Wilds and Moons.

The pigs did not turn often in our 500 logged spins. 53 of them chained at least two wins in one spin, which means two tumbles and the first Piggy Wild; 6 chained four and only 2 chained six, the point where all three pigs are wild; those two paid 14x (spin 180) and 15.1x (spin 449). The next two frames come from our separate media session.

Full plates and a big counter still do not promise a big total. The spin below had all three pigs active and more than 28,000 ways, and it paid a little over 15 times the stake.

Blowing Down the House: 11 spins and a multiplier that never drops

Three Moon Bonus Scatters in the base game start 11 free spins. The paytable says the win multiplier increases with every win; the game page says it starts at 1x, adds 1 per win and does not reset. Moons landed during the bonus fill the two meters in the top left corner: 3 Moons give +3 spins and +5 to the multiplier, 6 give +3 spins and +10, and each Moon beyond the sixth adds one spin.

The clip is the whole bonus from that purchase, with the game's own sound. It opens with "You won 11 free spins" and the straw blown off the house, the spins play on a wooden house at night, and the multiplier sign on the right moves one step with each win.

Our 500 spins: no free spins, and the best hit on spin 2

We played 500 paid spins at €1.00 on the demo server and logged every round. 34.4% of them paid something, but the median paying spin returned 0.8x, less than the stake. The best, 31.3x on spin 2, came almost entirely from the first win before any tumble. Free spins never triggered (count: 0), so every bonus figure on this page comes from the round we bought.

• 500paid demo spins at €1.00
• 34.4%of them paid something
• 31.3xbest single spin
• 0free spins bonuses triggered

The longest run without a win was 11 spins. The balance peaked at €5,030.30 after spin 2 and slid from there to its low point, €4,868.15, on spin 500, the last one: €368.15 back from €500.00 staked, 73.6%. Five hundred spins without a bonus show what a short session can feel like, not the long-run return.

The 90x Buy Feature and what our purchase returned

There is one option. The menu labels it Buy Feature, "Start the Blow Down the House bonus game", and a dialog shows the bet and the total cost before anything is charged. The rules add that it is activated from the base game and may not be available in all markets; Quickspin's game page puts its theoretical payout at 96.44%.

Our purchase cost €90.00 and the 11 spins paid €77.10: 77.1x the €1.00 bet and €12.90 short of the price. The multiplier reached x14, but only one Moon arrived, so the +5 stage never came. A single purchase can neither confirm nor contradict the 96.44% average.

Megaways, the 2013 original and Pigs of Steel side by side

The numbers separate the three wolf games on this site more than the art does. The original Big Bad Wolf from 2013 plays on a 5x3 grid with 25 lines, returns 97.34% by default and rates 4.24 on Quickspin's 1 to 5 scale; its top win is 1,225x, the largest win in 1 billion simulated spins. Megaways gives up 1.29 points of default RTP, moves to volatility 5 and lists a top win about 25 times larger.

Big Bad Wolf: Pigs of Steel (November 2023) returns to 5x3 with 25 lines, keeps the tumbles and adds fortified pigs and three bonus games. It returns 96.14% by default, is also rated 5, and its sheet puts a 100x win at 1 in 767 spins, against 1 in 1,235 here and 1 in 1,043 in the original. Its 18,173x is the largest win in 100 million simulated spins and this game's 30,540.35x the largest win in 100 billion simulated spins, so the two records come from simulations of different sizes.

The return is paid in different places too. The original's sheet puts 30.96% of its RTP in free spins and Pigs of Steel 44.95% in its free games, while Megaways puts 21.35% in free spins and 74.70% in the base game and what the sheet calls base features. Only the two newer games sell the bonus: 90x here, 60x or 240x in Pigs of Steel.

Outside the wolf family, Sakura Fortune 2 is the other Quickspin board here that pays ways: 576 ways on 5 reels, 3-4-4-4-3 rows, a fixed count, with 3 buy options from 55x.

Verdict: a Megaways wolf that pays mostly outside the bonus

Big Bad Wolf Megaways keeps the parts of the 2013 game people remember, pigs that turn wild as the tumbles run and Moons that blow the houses down, and puts them on a board whose ways counter can jump from a few thousand to tens of thousands between spins. On the sheet about three quarters of the return is paid in the base game and its features. Our 500 spins never reached the bonus naturally, and our one 90x purchase paid back less than its price. The free demo shows that rhythm before any money is involved.

• Big Bad Wolf review
• Big Bad Wolf: Pigs of Steel review
• Golden Glyph review

Big Bad Wolf Megaways questions

Short answers, checked against the game sheet, the rules screens and our logs.