Pirots 2 review
The Pirots band, famous from the first part, sets off in the sequel to hunt for barrels of rum and lands in a world of dinosaurs. ELK Studios released the slot on 7 November 2023. The grid begins at 6×6 and can widen, and in place of lines the signature CollectR mechanic works: birds travel across the field collecting symbols of their own colour. Volatility sits at 8 of 10 on the studio’s scale. In May 2024 the studio announced that the game took Game of the Year at the Casinobeats Game Developer Awards.
CollectR: birds collect amber of their own colour
In place of winning lines there is collecting. Birds travel across the grid and gather amber symbols of their own colour. Each collection pays, and sometimes brings feature symbols too. Every collected amber symbol at once fills the feature meter.
Several consequences follow. A payout depends not on the layout of rows but on which gems a bird manages to reach, that is, on how the field is arranged. The more of the grid matches a bird’s colour, the longer its path of collecting. And on the official artwork the birds come in four different colours, each with its own set of gems.
Amber climbs seven steps
Amber symbols upgrade up to seven times. Each step raises the payout, and visually the gem transforms, from a plain drop to a gem in a crown. The upgrades come from feature symbols, not by themselves.
So the main aim of the base part of the game is not a win on one spin but the accumulation of steps: the higher a gem’s level, the more each later collection pays.
The feature meter, three chests and eight feature symbols
Every collected amber symbol goes into the feature meter. When the meter fills, the player receives three chests with random feature symbols. The meter works as a power-up timer: while the birds roam the field it stores progress, and once full the game drops three gifts at once.
The studio names eight kinds of feature symbols, listed on the sheet in this order:
- Instant coin wins.
- Symbol upgrades.
- Wilds.
- Game grid expansions.
- Redrops (respins).
- Symbol transformations.
- Popcorn.
- Bonus symbols.
The set is broad: the grid grows, gems upgrade, birds get new paths, and three bonus symbols lead into a separate game.
Popcorn: a bridge across empty cells
A collected popcorn symbol fills empty positions with popcorn. Birds can cross each such cell once to reach new gems. It is the only symbol in the list that directly changes the birds’ route and not just the result.
The order of events matters as much as the set of symbols: a bird heads for gems of its colour, collects them, sometimes runs into an empty cell, and that is where popcorn helps. Two rounds with the same set of gems can therefore end differently if the birds took different routes. How a route is chosen is not disclosed.
The bonus game: what carries over on entry
Three bonus symbols collected in a round start the bonus. The sheet stresses four things that are not reset on entry: the grid size, the progress on the feature meter, the payout level of amber and the set of extra bonus symbols.
So preparation before the bonus weighs a lot: if you reach the bonus with a widened grid and upgraded amber, it starts from a high base, and with a small grid and zero upgrades you begin from nothing.
X-iter: five entries at 3 to 500 bets
X-iter lets you jump into the action without waiting. The studio sheet lists five modes:
| Mode | Price | What is known |
|---|---|---|
| Bonus Hunt | 3x the bet | every spin costs three times as much, and in the studio’s words the chance of the bonus is more than three times higher |
| Popcorn Fiesta | 10x | how it differs from normal play beyond the name is not disclosed |
| The 25x mode | 25x | — |
| Bonus Game | 100x | a bought entry into the bonus game |
| Super Bonus | 500x | the bonus on the maximum grid, with upgrades that always raise every amber symbol |
No mode lifts the ceiling: the Bonus Game and the Super Bonus run into the same 10,000x, so even the luckiest Super Bonus returns no more than twenty times its price. The ELK sheet shows the same through a line many studios omit, the max exposure meant for operators: 1,000,000 euros per round, exactly the top stake multiplied by the cap. Some operators have the buy modes switched off, since several countries ban bonus purchases.
A strict comparison of the modes with normal play is impossible: ELK publishes neither the RTP of the modes nor the bonus frequency nor the probability of the maximum. The open material also lacks the meter size, a pay table for the gems, the number of grid expansion steps and the odds of individual feature symbols. The RTP version number and coin sizes appear only in the in-game rules, and the ELK demo opens right in the browser, with no account and play coins.
Pirots 2 in the series and among ELK games
The first part, Pirots, came out on 7 March 2023, and Pirots 4 followed on 24 July 2025. The mathematical frame is the same across the series: all three games carry an RTP of 94.0% and the same ceiling, while the mechanics change. The second part rests on amber and popcorn.
On volatility ELK puts three of its games on the same mark, 8 of 10: Pirots 2, Pirots 3 and Cygnus 2. They share the same RTP as well and differ in ceiling and mechanics. Among other studio slots, Wild Toro II has 95.0% and 10,000x, Nitropolis 4 94.0% and 50,000x, and Ecuador Gold 96.1% and 2,500x: ELK often sets the RTP below 96% and offsets it with a high ceiling. Against that background Pirots 2 looks middling on maximum and on RTP, and it stands out for the collecting mechanic.
