Big Bad Wolf Demo: Quickspin's 2013 Three Little Pigs Slot

Swooping Reels and the pigs that turn wild

Quickspin first presented Big Bad Wolf in a June 2012 press release, which called it the first video slot in the studio's portfolio with Swooping Reels; the game page dates the release to 2013. Any winning symbols disappear, the gaps fill with symbols falling from above, each new win is added to the total, and the chain stops on the first drop that pays nothing. Lines pay from the leftmost reel.

The pigs give long chains their value. The rules count wins inside one round: the second turns the pig in the straw hat wild, the fourth the pig with the paintbrush, the sixth the pig with the trowel. A pig meter above the reels tracks the progress, and the beehive is the regular wild, standing in for everything except the Wolf Scatter and the Moon.

Long chains were rare in our session. 160 of our 500 spins paid, with a median win of 0.8x, less than the stake, and of the 157 winning spins outside the bonuses, 125 stopped at the first Swoop. Only two reached six wins, the point where all three pigs are wild. The longer one, spin 171, ran to nine wins for 28.4x, our best round without free spins.

The paytable is printed in euros for the stake on screen. At €2.50 five beehive wilds pay €100.00 (40x the bet) and five straw hat pigs €30.00 (12x); the card symbols top out at €10.00 for five.

Blowing Down the House in the free spins

Three or more Wolf Scatters pay 3x the bet and start 10 free spins, and three more inside the bonus add another 10. Quickspin's game page adds that Pigs Turn Wild stays active throughout. The moons are the new part: those landing on the last reel fill a meter, three blow down the wood house for 2 extra spins, and six blow down the brick house for 2 more and a 2x multiplier on every win that follows.

Our media session caught one natural bonus and recorded all of it. It ran at the client's €2.50 stake, retriggered once and reached the brick house.

The retrigger came early and left 17 free spins on the counter.

Once six moons are in, the meter reads all wins x2 for the rest of the round.

The round paid €275.00 in total, 110x the €2.50 stake.

Our three logged bonuses at €1.00 spread just as widely. The one on spin 448 stayed at 10 free spins and paid 16x with its trigger. Spin 256 ran to 14, which under the rules means all six moons were collected (two extra spins at three moons, two more and x2 at six), for 61.4x. Spin 332 ran to 34, a total the rules only allow as two retriggers plus all six moons, for 178x.

What our 500 spins at €1.00 looked like

We played 500 paid spins on the demo server in one sitting and logged every request. The longest run without any win lasted 20 spins, and 6 rounds paid 10x or more, three of them the bonuses.

• 500paid demo spins at €1.00
• 32%of them paid something
• 178xbest spin, free spins round included
• 3free spins bonuses triggered

The line falls steadily for the first half. It touched its low of €4,884.00 on spin 255, one spin before the first bonus paid 61.4x. The real turn came on spin 332: until then the balance had never climbed back to €5,000.00, and after the 178x bonus it never fell below that mark again. The peak, €5,089.40, came on spin 340, and we finished on €5,004.20.

A return of 100.8% over 500 spins is luck, not a measurement: without the one bonus on spin 332 the session ends well down. The sheet puts a win of 100x or more at 1 in 1,043 spins, so our single such win in 500 spins neither confirms nor contradicts it.

The 2013 original next to Megaways and Pigs of Steel

Big Bad Wolf is the parent of a small family, and the original is the plainest of the three: 25 lines, no buy, volatility 4.24 of 5 and a sheet maximum of 1,225x. It also has the highest default RTP of the three, 97.34%.

The Big Bad Wolf Megaways review covers the September 2021 remake on 6 reels, up to 7 rows (Megaways, up to 117,649 ways), with a 90x bonus buy and a maximum of 30,540.35x at 96.05%. Quickspin rates it 5 of 5.

The Pigs of Steel review covers the November 2023 sequel, which keeps the 5x3 grid and 25 lines but adds two buy options (60x and 240x) and a maximum of 18,173x at 96.14%. Both sequels reach far higher top wins than the original, at a lower default RTP. Quickspin also runs a live version, Big Bad Wolf Live, released in the summer of 2023 on Playtech Live.

Is the original wolf still worth a spin?

Big Bad Wolf still reads cleanly: one cascade rule, one pig rule and a bonus with two clear steps. Its 97.34% default model is the highest default RTP of the 10 slots we review, and the ceiling is the price: 1,225x is a small fraction of what either sequel lists. Pick it for the return and the rhythm of the cascades, not for the size of the top win.

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

Big Bad Wolf questions

Short answers, taken from the in-game rules, Quickspin's game sheet and our own session log.