Pink Elephants 2 review
Pink Elephants 2 is Thunderkick’s 2020 follow-up to its best-known franchise, and it keeps the original’s frame almost untouched: six reels, four rows, 4,096 ways, Mystery Scatters and a meter-driven bonus. What changed is the upgrade path. The mid-value symbols are now four coloured goats, and instead of turning straight into elephants they climb a ladder of value until the last meter converts every one of them into a Pink Elephant at once. In autumn 2020 the game picked up three nominations at an industry awards event as one of the standout releases for the Japanese, Swedish and Ukrainian markets.
Goats, the elephant and paying ways
The sequel stays in the same psychedelic universe but swaps the cast. Abstract coloured icons are gone, replaced by purple, orange, green and blue goats. It is more than a reskin: each goat owns a meter, and those four animals are the ones that travel from mid pay to top symbol during the feature.
There are 13 symbols: the top Pink Elephant, four mid-tier goats, low 9–A ranks, Wild and Scatter. Cards do not upgrade. The night desert and starry sky differ from Trinity’s jungle; the screen is 16:9 and conversions happen on the reels without separate cut scenes.
Payouts come from one symbol repeated on neighbouring reels from the far left, row irrelevant. A combination’s ways equal the product of matching symbols on each reel in the chain. Each way pays only its highest win, and the spin’s total is the sum of them.
A notional chain with one elephant on reel one, three on reel two and two on reel three gives 1 × 3 × 2 = 6 ways. One Wild on reel four extends it to four reels without changing that ways count. An empty third reel breaks the chain regardless of matches to its right. Wild substitutes for everything except Scatter in regular play and free spins.
Mystery Scatters and free-spin length
On any base game spin, the Mystery Scatter feature can drop one to five extra scatters onto the grid. Its only job is to help you collect a trigger’s worth of scatters. Its scope is the base game; inside the bonus, extensions come from ordinary scatters alone.
Three scatters start the feature, and more scatters mean more spins. Inside the round, two or more scatters extend it. The feature inherits its trigger spin’s bet.
| Scatters | Spins on trigger | Extension inside the bonus |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | — | from 3 spins |
| 3 | 7 | per paytable |
| 4 | 11 | per paytable |
| 5 | 15 | per paytable |
| 6 | 19 | up to 11 spins |
Mystery Scatter is described only for regular play: ordinary Scatters retrigger within the feature. Exact additions for intermediate retrigger counts come from the paytable rather than the starting-spin column.
Four meters and the final conversion
Elephant Orbs gathered in the feature feed four symbol meters, one per goat. The rule works in three steps:
- When a meter fills, its goat is replaced by the next mid symbol on the paytable until free spins end.
- Every full meter awards one extra free spin.
- When the fourth and final meter fills, all mid symbols become Pink Elephants until the round ends.
This two-phase design is the key difference from the first game. There, every meter delivered an elephant straight away, so value rose evenly. Here the first three meters give a moderate lift, one goat becoming a pricier goat, and the real jump comes with the fourth, when all four mid types turn into the top symbol together.
The paytable determines upgrades. The info sheet lists goats from purple to blue and the 2021 rules list them in reverse; list order alone does not establish meter-completion order. After the finale, the four mid types merge with the elephant, without implying equally weighted draws of five out of eleven paying types or a guaranteed large result.
Return builds and cap termination
Three return levels exist for the sequel: 96.13%, 94.15% and 90.10%. The 90% build exists for specific markets; in summer 2021 the studio switched it on for Germany under its own game ID. Which one an operator runs is shown on the in-game rules screen.
Build IDs are tk-s1-g29, tk-s1-g29-94 and tk-s1-g29-90 respectively. Mechanics, symbols and the limit match; the 94.15% build retains the standard’s high volatility. Hit, bonus and final-meter frequencies are unpublished, so earlier waits do not determine the next trigger.
The sequel’s rules are explicit: the maximum total bet multiplier for one game round is 10,000. Once that limit is reached, the round is terminated and no further wins are paid, even if free spins remain.
Completed meters are not stated as a necessary condition for reaching the maximum: the rule caps the entire round rather than one route to it.
The original, Trinity and other games
| Aspect | First game | Second game |
|---|---|---|
| Mid symbols | Red, yellow, green, blue | Four goats |
| Meter effect | Symbol becomes an elephant at once | Symbol steps up; the fourth meter turns all mids into elephants |
| Published hit rate | 22.8% | none |
2017 original from 2017 has 96.1% RTP and an 8,200x maximum. November 2025 brought Trinity with a seventh bonus reel, 16,384 ways and a 14,000x limit. The studio’s 2025 favourites placed the sequel alongside Esqueleto Explosivo 3 and Midas Golden Touch 3.
Esqueleto Explosivo 2 uses cascades, while Beat the Beast: Griffin’s Gold uses roaming Wilds and multipliers, different from meter-driven goat upgrades.
