Piggy Riches 3: Hog Heaven review
Piggy Riches 3: Hog Heaven came out from NetEnt on 26 August 2025 and continued a pig-themed line that began in 2010. The layout is classic: five reels, three rows, twenty lines. Two ideas carry it. Walking Wild pigs cross the reels and collect a multiplier. A colossal symbol on a 5×5 bonus board then gathers pearls, coins and jackpots. An Elevate menu adds five ways in.
Purple rings and a family in fur
The studio banner spreads rings out from the centre like ripples over a purple wash. Two characters stand in the middle. Mrs Piggy wears sunglasses, a green jacket with a fur collar and pearls. Mr Piggy has a top hat, a monocle, a ginger moustache and a cigarette holder. A piglet sits between them. The logo carries a golden winged pig, and Golden Pig is the rule-book name of the Scatter. The studio text calls it a lavish piggy adventure, and the picture backs that up.
The 2010 original, per the studio, put its pigs in a country mansion rather than on a farm. Hog Heaven stays on that road: wealth, polish and a pair of aristocratic characters.
Mr walks right, Mrs walks left
The main base-game attraction is called Walking Wild Re-Spins. Mr Piggy and Mrs Piggy land on the reels as Wilds and start the re-spins. After that the order is simple:
- At the start of each re-spin both Wilds move one position sideways.
- Mr Piggy walks to the right, Mrs Piggy walks to the left.
- Re-spins go on until no Wild is left on the reels.
- The re-spin total is added to the win of the spin that triggered them, at the same bet.
The further a Wild lands from the edge it is heading for, the longer it lives. A pig standing on reel one and heading right crosses the whole grid. The same pig on reel five heading right is gone at once. Walking Wild Re-Spins also appear in Jack and the Beanstalk 2.
Walking geometry: when a collision is possible
Mr walks right and Mrs walks left, so they can meet only when Mr stands to the left of Mrs in the same row. If the order is reversed they drift apart and no colossal Wild appears. This follows from the walking directions; the studio does not describe that case separately.
The same logic gives a rough length for the re-spins. A Mr Piggy that lands on reel one lives for about five steps, on reel two about four, on reel five just one, and Mrs Piggy mirrors that. The rules say only that re-spins continue while Wilds remain on the reels, so this is potential rather than a promised number of re-spins: the best starts for Mr are on the left, for Mrs on the right.
The collision and the Wild multiplier
The best moment arrives when Mr and Mrs end up in the same row and collide. They merge into a colossal Wild. Its size depends on where they meet: 3×3 if the collision happens in the middle, 3×2 at the top or the bottom. The colossal Wild then drifts left or right at random until it leaves the reel.
A symbol that large covers six or nine cells. That sharply raises the chance of line wins across several lines, and the Wild multiplier sits on top.
Every Wild on the reels starts at x1. For each winning combination it takes part in during the re-spins, the multiplier goes up by 1. When two or more Wilds with x2 or higher form the same line win, their multipliers are added together, not multiplied: Wilds at x3 and x4 on one line give the win x7.
Golden Pig opens the 5×5 board
Free spins start with a single Golden Pig Scatter anywhere on the reels of the main game. Not three symbols, as in most slots, but one. It awards 10 spins on a 5×5 board. This is where the game changes its rules: the bonus has no lines at all, and only special symbols can land. They are coins, jackpots, an x1 multiplier, a +3 spins token, pearls, Level Up and the Mystery Wheel.
A 2×2 colossal symbol starts in the bottom-left corner. When a pearl lands, the symbol moves to it and takes everything inside its borders. With no pearl on a spin, the symbol stays put. It pays nothing by itself: the payouts come from the pearls, coins and jackpots inside its borders. The bonus becomes a chase: pearls decide where the collector goes and what it picks up on the way. Experience from the base game, with its lines and walking pigs, says almost nothing about it.
Pearls, coins and jackpots in numbers
Every bonus prize is expressed in bets. Coins and pearls are multiplied by the current multiplier before they are collected, and that multiplier is lifted by the x1 symbol and stops at x10.
| Bonus symbol | Values (bet) | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Coin | 2.5, 5, 10, 25, 50 | Pays a prize, multiplied by the counter |
| Pearl | 1.25, 2.5, 5, 10, 25 | Pays a prize and feeds the growth meter |
| Jackpot | 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 | Pays a fixed prize |
| x1 multiplier | +1 on the counter | Caps at x10 |
| +3 | 3 extra spins | Extends the bonus |
| Level Up | A step to the next gem | The colossal symbol grows one size |
| Mystery Wheel | A wheel with four outcomes | x1, +3, Level Up or coins |
The jackpots are fixed prizes, not progressives: there is no pooled fund behind them. Two top jackpots of 5,000x together make 10,000x, just 300 bets short of the game’s cap.
The pearl meter and the climb to 5×5
Collected pearls feed a meter, and at three marks the colossal symbol grows while the bonus gains extra spins.
- At 5 pearls the symbol becomes 3×3 and the bonus gets 2 extra spins.
- Nine pearls bring a 4×4 symbol and 3 extra spins.
- With 12 pearls the symbol reaches 5×5 and 4 spins are added.
Pass all three marks and the meter adds 9 spins to the starting 10, which makes 19 spins. The +3 symbols add three more each. Once the meter is full, new pearls and Level Up symbols no longer go into it. A 5×5 symbol fills the whole board, so it takes everything on screen.
Level Up also lifts the symbol to the next size. The area grows faster than the side: a 2×2 covers 4 of the 25 cells, a 3×3 covers 9 and a 4×4 covers 16, so going from 3×3 to 4×4 adds seven cells and from 4×4 to 5×5 nine. The last steps are worth more than the first, although they are harder to get, and since the counter multiplier works on prizes inside the borders, it is strongest once the symbol has already grown.
A Mystery Wheel picked up by the colossal symbol spins a wheel. It hands out an x1 multiplier, three extra spins, a Level Up or coins. The collector beside the reels shows the combined total of coins, jackpots and pearls gathered during the bonus.
Five doors through Elevate
Elevate replaces the classic bonus buy with a five-item menu priced in bets:
- Golden Pig at 5x raises the Scatter chance;
- Walking Wild Re-Spins at 10x: re-spins with the walking pigs;
- Colliding Wilds at 30x gives re-spins where the pigs are guaranteed to collide;
- Free Spins at 100x opens the bonus;
- Free Spins and Collide at 500x starts the bonus multiplier at x5 and, once the bonus ends, fires re-spins with a guaranteed collision.
No RTP is given for the individual items, so ranking them by value is impossible: a 500x price only says that entry costs five hundred bets. As with any bonus buy, the entry price pulls variance forward, and the average result does not rise from it.
The price of a chance: Golden Pig next to its siblings
Almost every newer NetEnt game has an Elevate item that lifts the odds of the bonus. The prices differ, and Golden Pig sits near the top of the line.
| Game (year) | Item | Price | What the studio promises |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starburst Galaxy (2024) | Bonus Boost | 3x | Better odds of the Galaxy Star |
| Jack Hammer 4 (2025) | Free Spins Hunt | 2x | Double the chance of the bonus |
| Dead West (2025) | Scatter Hunt | 1.5x | Better odds of free spins |
| Piggy Riches 3 (2025) | Golden Pig | 5x | Better odds of a Scatter |
| Spice (2026) | Bonus Hunt | 3x | Better odds of free spins |
| Aftermath (2026) | Scatter Hunt | 5x | More than seven times the chance of the bonus |
| Jack and the Beanstalk 2 (2026) | Bonus Hunt | 1.5x | A 2x chance of the bonus (20x at a 10x price in the Extreme item) |
For two games the studio names the size of the boost: double, and more than sevenfold. For Golden Pig there is no such number, so the price-to-benefit ratio cannot be worked out. What is visible is that 5x is a premium tier next to the 1.5x, 2x and 3x asked by most of the others.
From Piggy Riches 2010 to Hog Heaven
The NetEnt original came out on 16 August 2010, and the official pages of both games show how far the studio has moved. Lines went from 15 to 20, the RTP is 96.06% against 96.38%, the volatility index rose from 5.4 to 9.9, the hit frequency fell from 34% to 23%, and the cap climbed from 2,400x to 10,300x, a 4.3-fold rise. The stake now runs from 0.20 to 40 instead of 0.15 to 300, a top stake that is modest by the standards of the line. The game traded frequency for reach, which is the common line of NetEnt’s newer releases: Gonzo’s Quest II and Starburst Galaxy sit next to it with an RTP around 96% and a 23–24% hit rate.
The 9.9 index sits at the lower edge of high volatility on the studio platform scale, although the word itself is not printed on the game page. For comparison, Blood Suckers 2 is noticeably steadier.
In the original a Wild tripled the line win, and before the bonus the player picked one of three Scatters, that is, a mix of spins and multiplier; the bonus multiplier reached x18. Now the choice screen is gone, replaced by one Golden Pig, 10 spins and a game of speed and board size. The brand later appeared in Megaways form from Red Tiger, for example Piggy Riches Megaways.
What the official data leaves out
The studio material has no pay table for the regular symbols, no bonus frequency, no cap rule (does the round stop once the maximum is reached?) and no upper limit for the Wild multiplier in the re-spins. Nor does it give the odds for each pearl, coin and jackpot value, how many jackpots can drop in one bonus or whether the counter multiplies them. The return of the bonus is easiest to get a feel for in the demo, which runs on NetEnt’s own server.
