Crystal Catcher review
There are thousands of gold and crystal mines all over the world that exist with the sole intention of making the people that own them rich. It makes sense then that mining has become such a popular theme among slot developers. Push Gaming has donned its mining hat and grabbed its pickaxe for the Crystal Catcher online slot game, but does it manage to find anything worth keeping? Let’s dig deep, hit spin, and find out.
Crystal Catcher Theme and Design
The design of the Crystal Catcher slot game is solid, though it does little interesting with the genre. Titles like Dead Canary from Nolimit City and Blueprint Gaming’s Diamond Mine Megaways highlight how you can get creative with this theme, and Crystal Catcher lacks that spark. That said, the graphics are sharp, and the colours do pop off the screen nicely, with the borderless reels playing host to a selection of symbols that, oddly, are designed to look like beetles.
How to Play Crystal Catcher
The Crystal Catcher uses a larger-than-average 7x7 slot grid. Instead of traditional paylines, the slot opts for a cluster-pay mechanic, with the game paying out when players land clusters of five or more matching symbols adjacent to each other.
Push Gaming has released two versions of the slot, with one offering an RTP of 94.3%, and one offering 96.3%. Needless to say, we highly recommend checking and trying to find the higher variant. The slot is considered highly volatile and serves up maximum wins of 10,000x the player’s stake, which is a solid offering.
Crystal Catcher Bonus Features
Push Gaming has taken a look through some of its most popular hits and decided that it’s the turn of Fire Hopper to get another go-around. The bonuses here are identical to the ones you would find in that game, only with a different setting.
Firstly, the game uses a cascading-win mechanic. Whenever a win is secured, the winning cluster disappears and new symbols fall from above. This will continue happening until no new winning clusters are formed.
There are two Wild symbols in Crystal Catcher: a Golden Beetle Wild and a standard Beetle Wild. Whenever a Crystal symbol lands at the same time as one of these, the Beetle will spring to life, jump across the reels, and land on the Crystal. The Beetle will then add a multiplier of x1 to the spot and will leave a Golden Beetle in its original position.
This can continue to happen, with Wild Beetles adding to their multiplier each time they jump. It is possible to end up with multiple Wilds on the grid with big multipliers, leading to some big wins.
The Beetles will also leap to a bonus symbol if one lands at the same time. When this happens, players get seven free spins. During the round, Beetle Wilds are sticky.
Finally, the Beetles may also jump out to grab an instant-prize symbol if one lands. These can display up to 500x.
Crystal Catcher Slot Verdict
Push Gaming knows how to deliver a fun cluster-pay slot, and Crystal Catcher is another great example of this. While the game feels like a rehash of Fire Hopper, there is no denying that it’s a great game to base something on, so we don’t mind too much. The titular Crystal Catcher bonus feature can lead to some exciting periods of gameplay, and a good period of play here can lead to some nice wins.