Honey Hunters: Slot Overview

Editor’s note: This review evaluates Honey Hunters based on its early access state. We plan on updating this review once it gets a full release.

Let’s pose a question. When you hear the phrase “honey hunters,” do you instantly imagine bees darting between blossoms, gathering nectar to turn into honey back at the hive, or do you picture a human beekeeper digging into a honeycomb and helping themselves to the golden goods? And, while we’re at it, is that basically capitalism in disguise? Either way, after today, Honey Hunters is likely to stick with you as the name of an online slot from the wildly inventive Print Studios.

Theme-wise, Print Studios behaves like a creative magpie, hopping from Monty Python-style absurdity to sci-fi opera, to potato, to demonic ritual, to tower defence, and plenty more besides. They’ve also leaned into cuteness more than once, and Honey Hunters is firmly in that camp. Visually, it plays with contrast: a stone grid sits in front of a stone, giant-like character—somewhat reminiscent of Pyornkrachzark the Rock-Biter from The Neverending Story—while flowers frame the reels and a forest fills out much of the backdrop. Honey Hunters also brought Royal Potato to mind, not because the two games share much mechanically, but because both feel like a peek into a secluded society, tucked away from the wider world and running as a fenced-off, self-contained community. Think Krakoa, but with insects.

When you’re ready to get the bzz bzz going, Honey Hunters offers bet sizes of 10 c to $/€100, plus a Feature Bet that lets players purchase the free spins round. Depending on the Honey Forge features (covered below), the RTP on standard play ranges from 96.09% to 96.61%, and the volatility is medium-high. In a Print first, Honey Hunters uses a ways-to-win system, with 243 ways across a 5-reel, 3-row layout.

On the pay table, the lower symbols are blue flowers, yellow flowers, orange flowers, and purple flowers, followed by Stinger Steve, Aphid Alan, Petal Paladin, Nectar Nomad, and Cardinal Chief. The named premium icons show characters riding creatures—like a buzzing take on Journey 2—perched on giant bees. So, did the animals in Honey Hunters grow, or did the people shrink? A 5-of-a-kind flower win pays 0.4 times the bet, while 5 matching high symbols return 1 to 20 times the bet.

Honey Hunters: Slot Features

Spend enough time foraging in this woodland, and you’ll run into Honey Hunters’ Honey Forge, wild, Spreading Wild, wheel feature, free spins, and feature buy.

Honey Forge

Landing symbols carrying honey builds up the Honey Forge meter beside the reels, unlocking one feature at a time. Once a button on the meter is filled, its corresponding feature can be activated by pressing that button, spending all stored honey in the process. Only the most recently filled button can be used. Every Honey Forge feature costs 1x the bet to unlock. You can activate a Spreading feature with a guaranteed wild plus 1 to 4 spreading frames, free spins, free spins with Petal Paladin active, free spins with Nectar Nomad active, or free spins with Cardinal Chief active.

Wild Symbol & Spreading Wild

Any symbol covered in honey gains the power of a wild, substituting for all other paying symbols. Wild winning ways pay the same as the highest premium symbol. If a wild contains a premium symbol, it spreads that symbol type a random number of times across the grid. When a symbol spreads into a spreading frame, it causes extra premium symbols to spread as well.

Wheel Feature

Any time honey is collected in the base game, the Wheel feature has a chance to activate. If it triggers, the wheel spins, and when it lands on a prize sector, the next available reward in that sector is highlighted. The wheel respins as long as it stops on a prize sector that still has prizes left to highlight. Once the feature finishes, every highlighted prize is paid out. Possible wins include:

• Honey – this is added to the Honey Forge meter. Getting ‘Max’ fills it completely.
• Coins – awards its value times the bet.
• Spreading Frames – awards a Spreading Wild feature spin with a guaranteed wild and active spreading frames.

Free Spins

Landing 3 or more scatters starts the free spins feature. In free spins, only one type of premium symbol appears on the reels. Players can progress through stages by collecting honey. Each time a new stage is reached, +4 free spins are added, and the premium symbol on the reels is upgraded. Hitting a wild symbol grants +1 free spin and triggers the Spreading feature. The wild leaves behind a spreading frame in its position for the remainder of the current stage.

Feature Bet

With the Feature Bet, players can pay 80 times the total bet to instantly trigger the free spins feature. The RTP for the Feature Bet is 96.4%.

Honey Hunters: Slot Verdict

It’s kind of amusing. Just a few Print Studios releases ago, we were watching a ritual designed to summon Lucifer via Dirge Wilds in the pitch-black slot aptly named Darkness. Now we’re flitting around flowers, gathering nectar to make honey alongside a crew of lovable critters. If nothing else, Print Studios is impressively varied. And for players, that variety tends to be good news: you rarely know what you’ll be greeted with when you boot up one of their slots for the first time—both in terms of presentation and the gameplay ideas underneath.

Honey Hunters is another title with a handful of surprises up its sleeve, even if it didn’t hook quite as instantly as, for example, Pine of Plinko or Tarasque. Still, as Print’s first step into the 243 ways to win format, it’s a solid effort, and the Honey Forge is a genuinely fresh concept. It’s not often you see features or mechanics that directly influence a slot’s RTP in this way, and holding out while you build toward maximum honey could be worth it. That said, you don’t have to wait until the end if you’d rather not—once you’re ready to fire a feature you’ve earned, you can simply hit the button and go. In a way, it’s like taking honey straight from the hive.

Honey Hunters can also deliver plenty of sweetness, with a 10,000x the bet win cap. Print Studios has a history of liking features that can scale dramatically when things start going your way—like the expanding Jumbo symbol in Royal Potato that substitutes for more symbol types, or the Jumbo symbol action in Cash Defense. Honey Hunters follows a similar arc, where collecting honey steadily moves you toward higher-value symbols. Without something like Superspinners, it may feel like a tougher climb, but remember Print has increased the number of ways and added Honey Forge features to keep the journey engaging. All told, Honey Hunters isn’t the kind of release that completely blows the doors off the way some Print Studios slots have, but it’s a charming, high-quality game with a neatly structured feature set that can become noticeably stronger as it develops.