Chicken Drop review
Chicken Drop came out on 29 July 2021 and is a cluster pays slot on a 7×7 grid. Instead of gods and gems it uses strawberries, acorns, corn and a wide-eyed hen sitting on her nest. The studio’s own press release talks about cartoon visuals and a banjo soundtrack. The idea is easy to state: a giant golden egg falls and turns a whole patch of the board into one matching symbol.
A farmyard with a barn, an oak and a hen holding a sign
The scenery is painted in bright, friendly colours: an oak on the left, a red barn on the right and green hills behind a wooden fence. The hen peeks out of her nest with a sign reading “Give me” and a clover on it. On the left stands a signpost for buying free spins, and the demo shows 200 at a 2.00 bet, which is exactly 100 bets.
There are seven paying symbols: strawberry, blueberry, corn, acorn, a spotted mushroom, a spade and a heart. Two helper symbols drive the egg, a watering can and a clover. The treasure chest works as a scatter and can land on any reel. The bottom bar is the familiar Pragmatic Play panel with bet, autoplay and turbo on the space bar.
What a strawberry pays and what a heart pays
A win needs a group of at least five identical symbols standing side by side or one above another, and diagonal neighbours do not link up. Every figure in the table is expressed in bets as given on the rules page. Groups larger than 37 pay as 37, so the last column covers every big size.
Strawberry — 5: 1; 7: 2.5; 8: 5; 9-13: 7.5; 14-18: 20; 19-24: 100; 25-36: 250; 37 or more: 1,000.
Blueberry — 5: 0.75; 7: 2; 8: 3; 9-13: 5; 14-18: 10; 19-24: 30; 25-36: 50; 37 or more: 500.
Corn — 5: 0.5; 7: 1.25; 8: 2.5; 9-13: 3.75; 14-18: 7.5; 19-24: 20; 25-36: 37.5; 37 or more: 250.
Acorn and mushroom — 5: 0.2; 7: 0.6; 8: 1.25; 9-13: 2.5; 14-18: 5; 19-24: 12; 25-36: 25; 37 or more: 100.
Spade and heart — 5: 0.15; 7: 0.3; 8: 0.75; 9-13: 1.25; 14-18: 2.5; 19-24: 6; 25-36: 12.5; 37 or more: 50.
A group of six pays slightly more than five: strawberry 1.5 bets, blueberry 1.25, corn 0.75, acorn and mushroom 0.4, spade and heart 0.2. Six strawberries pay seven and a half times as much as six hearts, so the eye should read colour first and size second. The top of the scale rises in jumps. Fifteen strawberries pay 20 bets, while nineteen pay 100. Those thresholds are where the sums people talk about begin.
The chest pays on its own and its position does not matter: 4 chests give 3 bets, 5 give 5, 6 give 20, and seven, if the grid can hold them, pay 100 bets. The chest takes no part in clusters and is not multiplied by the egg, but it opens the free spins.
Tumbles and the running total of one spin
After a payout the winners disappear, the rest drop down and new ones fall from above. This repeats as long as fresh groups appear. All payouts from the chain are added together and credited only when the whole chain has finished.
When several groups stand on the board, each one pays. A single group takes only its highest line from the table, so there is no such thing as “the five-symbol pay plus the nine-symbol pay”.
Watering can and clover: two counters before the egg
These two symbols are the reason the game exists. The can sets the size of the egg and the clover sets its multiplier. If at least one of them lands in the base game, an egg drops once all tumbles are done. It cracks open and replaces whatever was on screen with a group of one random paying symbol.
Egg size (cans) — 1: 2×2; 2: 3×3; 3: 4×4; 4: 5×5; 5: 6×6; 10: 6×6.
Multiplier (clovers) — 1: x2; 2: x3; 3: x4; 4: x5; 5: x6; 10: x11.
Five cans reach the largest egg, while the multiplier needs ten clovers to arrive at x11. Size therefore fills faster than the multiplier, and in the base game a big egg with a modest multiplier is the more common picture. The multiplier applies to the win of the groups that formed after the egg dropped.
If more cans or clovers land after the first egg and its own tumbles, another egg falls. The chain continues until no more upgrade symbols appear. Then every upgrade resets and the spin closes, so in the base game cans and clovers do not carry over between spins.
What an egg is worth and why neighbours matter
The egg guarantees a patch of matching symbols, not a win. A 2×2 egg makes four cells, and a win needs five, so it pays only if a matching symbol happens to sit next to it. From 5×5 upward the threshold is cleared easily, and a strawberry egg is worth 250 bets before any multiplier. The egg’s symbol is random, and with identical upgrades the gap is huge: a 4×4 egg of hearts pays 2.5 bets, one of strawberries 20.
The other cells stay where they are. If the same symbol lies next to the egg, it joins the group, and the payout is read for the total size. A 4×4 egg of sixteen hearts with two neighbouring hearts becomes a group of 18 and pays the same line, 2.5 bets. With four neighbours the group reaches 20 and jumps to the 19-24 line: 6 bets against 2.5. Strawberries show the effect most: 20 bets at 18 cells and 100 at 19.
A 6×6 egg covers 36 of the 49 cells. One neighbouring strawberry is enough to push the group to 37, and the payout leaps from 250 to 1,000 bets.
Chests, 10 to 20 free spins and the 100-bet buy
Four chests start the free spins with 10 spins. Five chests give 15 and six give 20. Inside the round, three or more chests add 5 more spins, and the rules set no limit on retriggers. Special reels are in play during the feature, but the rules do not say how they are built.
Two things differ from the base game, and both favour the player.
- Cans and clovers that land stay in effect until the round ends, rather than resetting after every spin.
- After each spin’s tumbles an egg always drops, even when no new upgrade arrived.
Ten spins mean ten eggs and twenty spins mean twenty. Each one leans on what has piled up: five cans push the egg to 6×6 and ten clovers lift the multiplier to x11. Only in this combination does the game come close to its cap.
The feature is sold at a price of 100 current bets wherever a bonus buy is allowed. A bought round begins with 4, 5 or 6 chests, picked at random. RTP with the purchase is 96.53% against 96.50% in the ordinary game. A gap of three hundredths of a percent is far too small to guide the choice, so buying changes the tempo rather than the return.
The 5,000x ceiling at odds of 1 in 4,201,681
The maximum win is limited to 5,000 bets. When the total win of a feature, tumbles and modifiers included, reaches that mark, the round stops immediately, the prize is credited and whatever features were left are lost. According to the demo data, the odds of such a round are 1 in 4,201,681.
The road to the top runs through the priciest symbol. A strawberry group of 37 or more pays 1,000 bets, and a x5 multiplier already hits the ceiling: four clovers in one round with a 6×6 strawberry egg are enough if one more strawberry sits next to it. A blueberry group of 37 or more needs x10 for the same, which means nine clovers. A 6×6 strawberry egg with no neighbours reaches only 2,750 bets even at x11, as does a corn group of 37 or more, and needs help from other wins. So the odds of 1 in 4,201,681 have no single explanation: cans, clovers and the egg’s symbol must all agree inside one round.
The bet ladder starts at 0.01 per line and reaches 12.00, and the grid counts as 20 lines, which gives a total bet from 0.20 to 240.
Medium volatility in the game’s own words
The rules screen calls the volatility medium and says that wins arrive steadily, with a range from low to very high. In practice small groups come often, while the truly large sums need a chain of can, clover and a lucky symbol in the egg.
Hit frequency and bonus frequency are not printed in the studio’s open data. Figures such as “a bonus every 150 spins” circulate on third-party sites, but nothing official backs them.
Where Chicken Drop sits among the studio’s games
The press release places it beside recent hits Book of Vikings, Empty the Bank and 5 Lions Megaways. At launch the Pragmatic Play collection had more than 200 HTML5 titles, and the studio was releasing up to five new slots a month. Yossi Barzely, the chief business development officer, explained the change of theme: after the Vikings the team wanted a fun-filled farm retreat.
Among cluster games this one stands out for an easy-to-read scheme of two upgrades and an egg. A related mechanism in candy wrapping is found in Fruit Party, and Sweet Bonanza shows growing multipliers in another package.
Speed, coins, autoplay and small interface settings
The demo hands out 100,000 play coins and starts at a 2.00 bet, and the rules in the information menu run to seven pages. The speed button cycles through three modes: normal, quick and turbo. Holding the space bar also triggers turbo. Quick mode suits this game better than turbo, because tumbles and the egg drop are short and the eye still has to catch which symbol cracked out.
The Credit and Bet labels are clickable and switch the display between coins and cash. The settings menu lets you switch off the intro screen, ambient music and sound effects separately. The banjo is noticeable, and some players keep only the win sounds on so they can hear the moment an egg lands.
The autoplay menu offers stops on several conditions: on any win, when a feature triggers, when a single win exceeds a set amount, and when the balance rises or falls by a set sum. A separate option skips the intro and outro screens of the feature.
