The action in Picnic Panic revolves around a group of ants that invades a family’s picnic, getting away with all their food and leaving them in a panic. The symbols appearing inside are a combination of humans, ants and foods that a picnic might have. It’s a fun and colorful slot from Cryptologic, and I enjoyed seeing a theme that nobody else has focused on so far, though some slots have come close. A picnic is an activity that most of us enjoy, but here the ants manage to ruin it. Despite that, they remain the ones you find yourself liking most.
A 5 reel/25 payline slot machine, Picnic Panic was created by the guys from Cryptologic, and they’ve been quite generous with the features of this game. You will find inside a combination of wild symbols, free games, multipliers and scatters, all improving the game even more than the slot’s own $150,000 top jackpot could.
Features of Picnic Panic
This is one of those slot machines that Cryptologic created with a complete collection of features, so you get the bonus game inside, along with the free games, multipliers, wilds and scatters. Both feature symbols trigger their own features, the wild giving you the bonus game, while the scatter has the free spins.
The symbol called Ant on the paytable, showing you a close-up of an ant with sunglasses, will be the one you hope you get on active lines whenever there are already a couple of matching symbols on them. Acting as the wild feature, Ant substitutes for other symbols, as long as that will allow for a new combo to be formed, or an existing one to be improved. It can’t substitute for the Sneaky Ant scatter symbol, but that’s its only limitation. When the Ant takes over multiple positions on an active line, it forms its own combo, and awards up to 7,500 coins in prizes.
Sneaky Ant would be the other important symbol, where you see a grinning ant running away with a piece of cake. You expect a scatter symbol to award prizes from any random position it might appear in, but that’s not exactly the case here. You need the Sneaky Ant scatter to appear starting from the left, and going towards the right side of the screen on reels in consecutive order. While you don’t need the scatters to be on the same payline, the fact that you can have four scatters on reels 2 to 5 and you don’t get anything because one is not present on the 1st reel is a limitation that takes a lot away from the game, as far as I’m concerned. If you do get the scatters in proper order, you can win up to 100x the wager of that spin.
Free Games Feature
You only need two wild Ant symbols to get the free games started. However, both wilds have to be on certain reels, the 1st and 5th. The feature starts, and you see that the symbols with Drink, Crisps, Cake, Fruit, Sandwich and Basket that are on reels 2, 3 and 4, will turn into numbers. All those numbers, added together, will give you the number of free spins. All free games take advantage of a 2x multiplier. You can also retrigger this feature, the reward being the same as the initial number of free spins.
Picnic Feature
The slot’s bonus game is the one that the Sneaky Ant scatter triggers. With 3+ scatters, appearing from the left to the right, you will be taken to a screen with five food items, out of which you get to pick three. Instant prizes are revealed with each pick, as multipliers to be used on the total bet that triggered this feature.
Betting options and jackpots
The full betting range of Picnic Panic is $0.01 to $500, with the maximum amount requiring a serious investment on the part of the player, with $20 coins used for all 25 paylines. There is no need to select them all if you don’t want to, and it’s also not necessary to use the largest coin available. You can reduce the denomination to as little as $0.01 should you have to.
There are 7,500 coins on the line in this game, with the actual cash value of the top prize going as high as $150,000. You need to do some serious betting in order to get that kind of value out of the 7500 coins though.
Design and symbols
The action takes place on a beautiful meadow, during a sunny day, with a team of thieving ants being the ones that the game places the emphasis on. They steal the food of the humans, which are in a panic because of them. The ants grin at you and they make themselves a pleasant part of the game, despite the negative role they have. It’s a funny game, which you will enjoy playing, with the cartoon characters and foods all made quite well.
Symbols: Ant (wild, 7,500x), Sneaky Ant (scatter, 100x the wager), Ant with Glasses (1,000x), Blonde Ant (500x), Pair of Ants (250x), Baby Boy (250x), Picnic Basket (200x), Sandwich (200x), Fruit (150x), Cake (150x), Chips (100x) and Juice (100x).
Is It Worth Playing?
Yes, it’s a game that is quite enjoyable, with decent graphics accompanying a prize of up to $150,000, plus enough features to insure that you’re not going to regret playing it.
The Picnic Panic slot machine is offered through the Cryptologic platform, so if you want to play it for real or just to practice, look out for casinos that use it.
