Flying Hippo: Slot Overview

You’ve likely heard the phrase “when pigs fly” to describe something that will never happen, but what about hippos taking to the skies? Given their bulk, hippos seem even less suited to flight than pigs. It’s also a slightly alarming image, considering hippos rank among the most dangerous land animals—there’s probably a film idea in there somewhere. After all, we got Sharknado, so anything’s possible. In any case, turning back to the game itself, here we have Flying Hippo, a LeoVegas exclusive created by software provider Pragmatic Play.

Flying Hippo is a cluster pays grid slot that felt unusual from beginning to end. First off, the theme presentation comes across as low-energy, as though it can’t quite decide what it wants to be. The setting is up in the air, with clouds drifting around the lower portion of the screen and a star-filled night sky above. There’s no shift into a bonus environment either—this is essentially the whole backdrop. Playing Flying Hippo felt like waiting for a punchline that never arrived.

As for the numbers, Pragmatic Play has given the game a five out of five for volatility, and it runs with an RTP of 93.99%. Pragmatic Play must feel it has plenty of friends already. For many players, that alone will be enough to look elsewhere, but if not, the slot works on any device, and bets can be set from 20 p/c per spin up to $/€100 per spin.

The core action in Flying Hippo plays out on a 7×7 matrix, where the aim is to land groups of 5 or more matching symbols connected vertically or horizontally. When you score a winning cluster, the tumble feature clears those symbols away and new ones fall in from above. Before the drop happens, though, a wild is randomly placed into one of the empty positions. Tumbles continue until no further wins are formed. Symbol-wise, the lower values are fluffy J-A card icons, while the higher symbols are a green star, a red star, a yellow star, and a hippo. A 5-6 symbol cluster returns 0.1 to 0.75 times the bet, increasing to 5 to 50 times the bet for clusters of 25+ symbols. Smiling clouds act as the wild symbols, appearing on all reels and substituting for any other symbol. Beyond that, Flying Hippo includes no additional symbol types.

Flying Hippo: Slot Features

There isn’t much in Flying Hippo in terms of extra content. The experience is largely built around the tumble mechanic and the Spawning Wild feature, although the wild system comes with several conditions. That said, Flying Hippo includes no bonus round and no free spins stage.

Spawning Wild Feature

Whenever a wild symbol is created by the tumble feature, it can receive a multiplier based on the current spin level. That multiplier applies to any later cluster wins that include the wild. If a wild helps form a winning cluster, it is collected by a meter. Each time 6 wilds collected are gathered in this way, the level of the spin increases from 1 to 2, then finally to 3. Prior to reaching level 1, wilds can appear without a multiplier or with an x2;

• In level 1, they can have x2 or x3 multipliers.
• In level 2, this increases to x3, x4, x5, or x6.
• In level 3, they also appear with values of x3, x4, x5, or x6.

Once level 3 is achieved, wild collection ends, and when the tumbles finish, 2 Colossal 2×2 wilds with random multipliers are placed in random spots on the grid. These Colossal Wilds can carry x3, x5, x7, x10, x15, x25, or x50. If a Colossal Wild lands on top of an existing wild, the smaller wild’s multiplier is added to the Colossal Wild. If multiple wilds appear in the same cluster, their multipliers are added together. After the spin’s tumbles are complete, the meter resets to level 0.

Flying Hippo: Slot Verdict

Strange slot. There’s a drifting, cloud-floating vibe, and one of the icons is a hippo, but—pun intended—the flying hippo idea never really took off. The whole thing simply felt off. That wouldn’t matter so much if the gameplay and surrounding elements swooped in to compensate, but they don’t. Overall, Flying Hippo comes across as unfinished, or at least not fully considered—more rushed than refined. It’s as if the team forgot the deadline, realized it at midnight the day before release, then hurriedly stitched together some code, slapped on bland visuals, and picked a random title. A bit like when Marge Simpson invented “Ghost Mutt.”

Or perhaps someone at Pragmatic Play intentionally tried to punk LeoVegas. We’re not saying that’s what happened, but that’s the kind of reaction Flying Hippo can trigger. Along with the casino tie-in, the game’s stats make it feel like it’s also trying to punk players. With an RTP that would make the bean counters at ELK Studios jealous, why would anyone choose Flying Hippo after seeing the return figure? It’s not as if there’s a massive progressive jackpot to excuse the low RTP, or gameplay so impressive that players might ignore it. The mix of wild collecting, multiplier growth, and Colossal Wild drops isn’t a bad concept. It’s just buried under the awkward execution, the stats, and a theme that never really commits.

With Flying Hippo, Pragmatic Play has shown it can be unpredictably inconsistent. The previous title we reviewed from the studio was the excellent The Dog House Multihold, which refreshed a classic slot in a fun, modern way and reinforced the team’s standing as one of the best around. Then came Flying Hippo, a release that feels unnecessary and does little besides dent the studio’s reputation.