Culinary Clash: Slot Overview
Whether rich, poor, happy, sad, thin, or not so thin, there are things all human beings have in common, and one of those is the bodily need to feed. On one level, food is basically fuel for our organisms to function properly. On another level, eating and cooking, specifically, is not just a necessity but practically an art. We’re talking about fine dining here, a concept touched upon in the cluster paying grid slot Culinary Clash, designed by Hacksaw Gaming partner Bullshark Games.
Food that looks alive, thanks to eyes, mouths and moustache, accompanies players on their night out with Culinary Clash, where junk food takes on healthy food. Weird to think that a lot of our food, if not most, was at some stage actually alive, whether grown in the ground or wandering around on top of it. Moral or ethical quandaries are kept out of Culinary Clash, though, as this is a slot which makes eating out a fun event, held as it is in a cartoon restaurant where gaming grid, queen burger, and feisty tomato chef share space with a thoroughly stained tablecloth.
Culinary Clash chucks its ingredients into a 7×7 gaming area that makes wins out of clusters rather than ways or paylines. Players’ contribution to the mix is choosing a stake of 10 c to $/€100 and deciding whether to take up any of the feature buys. Before embarking on the culinary adventures, know that the math model volatility is rated 4 out of 5, and the highest RTP version comes in at 96.29%.
Winning combinations are caused when 5 or more matching symbols are connected in horizontally or vertically adjacent positions to form a cluster. A cascade mechanic removes and replaces winning symbols, repeating in this way as long as wins continue to hit. The low pays are aubergines, apples, carrots, and strawberries, while the high pays are fries, pizza slices, doughnuts, and burgers. Five OAK clusters award 0.1x to 0.5x the bet, and the biggest clusters are 36+ in size, awarding 70x to 500x the bet. Wild symbols, whatever the type, replace any paying symbol.
Culinary Clash: Slot Features
Symbols with multipliers are a big part of Culinary Clash, so a wall of text accompanies that feature, while the other extras are the Tomato symbol, the Wild Feast bonus round, Kitchen Chaos, and bonus buys.
Symbols With Multipliers
After a cluster win, a matching symbol with a multiplier will be added to one of the empty positions caused by the removed winning symbols. The multiplier value is equal to the number of symbols that were part of the win. Only high-paying symbols are able to generate symbols with multipliers. When the multiplier symbol is part of another cluster, its multiplier is applied to the win. If one or more symbols with multipliers are part of a winning cluster, only one new symbol with a multiplier appears. Its value is equal to the total of all multipliers in the win, plus one for each symbol without a multiplier also in the win. Symbols with multipliers persist through cascades but are removed for new base game spins. If a wild symbol is part of the winning cluster, it adds +1 to the new multiplier symbol value. Symbols with multipliers can also drop during the spin, possessing a value of x5 to x25.
Tomato
When a wild Tomato lands, it transforms all randomly selected low-pay symbols of one type on the grid into regular wild symbols. When two or more Tomato symbols land, each of them transforms a different low-pay symbol wild.
Wild Feast
In the base game, landing 3 or 4 scatters awards 8 or 10 free spins, respectively. During free spins, symbols with multipliers are persistent and increase progressively through the round, moving to a new position on each spin. Hitting a scatter awards an extra +1 free spin.
Kitchen Chaos
Landing 5 scatters in the base game triggers this feature with 12 free spins. At least four symbols with multipliers are guaranteed on the first spin. The rest of the rules are the same as Wild Feast.
Bonus Buys
Players can activate BonusHunt FeatureSpins at 3x each to make each spin 5 times more likely to trigger free spins, or Flavor Frenzy FeatureSpins for 50x to land at least 3 symbols with multipliers and one Tomato symbol. Wild Feast may be bought for 100x the bet, or Kitchen Chaos for 250x.
Culinary Clash: Slot Verdict
Bullshark Games has proven to be a dab hand at making cluster pays slots, with releases such as Amazing Miceketeers and Piggy Cluster Hunt already under its belt. Whilst neither game might have attained coveted classic status or anything like that, both were strong cluster-paying slots, which the studio bolstered with intriguing gaming ideas. Culinary Clash is another example that might not reinvent the cluster genre, but nevertheless contains some interesting ideas which might be worth sampling.
The awkwardly named symbols with multipliers are first on the block, and while they’re not as useful or instantly gratifying as roaming wild multipliers, aka Jammin’ Jars, they not only enhance the base game but can stack in significant numbers when they take on their persistent quality in the free spin rounds. They’re not as versatile as wilds, which can make wins from anywhere and anything (provided enough matching symbols cluster up) since they need to land next to their own kind to be part of the win they’re multiplying. This makes symbols with multipliers more situation-specific, not to mention potentially frustrating if they keep jumping in the wrong positions. But, as mentioned, they can appear on the board in numbers, so there are chances of landing the right symbols with a multiplier next to their matching type.
While the rule set was a little fiddly, a little restrictive, and not as instantly thrill-inducing as, say, ELK Studios‘ Propaganda, which shares certain traits, Culinary Clash does have a win cap of 10,000x the bet, possible in all game modes, so its particular recipe has kick. It’s also not bad when a bunch of multiplier symbols are leaping around the place, making Culinary Clash one for foody or cluster connoisseurs to add to the list.
Write a comment