Hugo Goal Introduction

Hugo Goal is a 3-reel video slot that runs on 5 fixed paylines. It works across all devices and lets you wager from just €0.05 up to €100. You win by landing three identical symbols on any payline. Overall, it’s a very straightforward title with little complexity to learn.

With the football world cup drawing near, casinos and studios tend to rush out football-themed promotions and slots, just like they’ve done before. A couple of comparable releases include Yggdrasil’s Bicicleta and NetEnt’s Football: Champions Cup, both of which arrived around the 2016 UEFA European Championship.

Hugo Goal Symbols

Hugo Goal features 5 lower-paying symbols shown as: footballs, whistle pipes, football shoes, timers and referee flags. The top-paying one among these, the football, returns 6x for a full screen. The 3 premium symbols are character-based – The Goat, Don Croco and Afskylia, with Afskylia being the strongest regular symbol, paying 25x for a full screen. The wild symbol shows Hugo’s face and is the highest-value symbol overall, paying a hefty 80x for a full screen (yes, that’s the joke).

As you’ve probably worked out by now, those payouts won’t take you very far, so the real boost comes from the Penalty Shoot-Out feature. Details are covered below.

Action Replay Feature

The Action Replay feature activates on non-winning spins when two full stacks of the same character (premiums) appear on the reels. The Wild (Hugo) symbol may substitute for any character symbol when triggering the feature. The reel that doesn’t contain the full stacks will then re-spin for free until a winning combination is achieved. If two different reels could be selected to re-spin, the reel with the greatest potential is the one that stays locked in place.

Free Kick Feature

The Free Kick feature triggers on a non-winning spin when two full stacks of the same item (low value symbol) are visible on the reels. The remaining reel (the one without the stacks) will make just one free re-spin, giving you one extra shot at landing a win.

Penalty Shoot-Out Bonus

The Penalty Shoot-Out bonus game is triggered when every symbol position on the reels is filled with the same symbol. You take control of Hugo as the goalkeeper, trying to save as many penalties as you can to multiply the winnings from the round that activated the feature.

You get exactly 5 save attempts. Choose the on-screen position where you think Hugo will stop the shot. Each successful save increases the win multiplier by one. If you save all 5 penalties, you’ll receive the top multiplier of x10. The available multipliers are x2, x3, x4, x5 and ,x10.

Conclusion

The Hugo slots have shown they can perform well for Play’n GO, even if the theme—childish, to put it mildly—definitely splits opinion. It won’t suit everyone, and it’s certainly not the right pick if you prefer high variance, high potential slots. It feels more like a light, upbeat game aimed at the recreational gambler rather than the more hardcore crowd.

Play’n GO lists Hugo Goal as a high variance slot, but in practice the potential is clearly limited. The max win is 800 times the stake, and the only way to reach it is by saving all 5 penalties in the Penalty Shoot-Out bonus. If you don’t manage that, there’s honestly not much upside. The standard RTP is 96.49% but may vary by casino, so be sure to check the help file.