Pond of Plinko: Slot Overview

Plinko is built around balls dropping from the top of the screen, ricocheting off pins on the way down, and finally settling into prize buckets at the bottom. Straightforward, fun, maybe a bit basic? Not when Print Studios is involved. After reshaping the format into delightfully dangerous slots with Pine of Plinko and Pine of Plinko 2, the studio looks to push it even further with the third entry, Pond of Plinko. This time, the big twist is a pre-Plinko bonus Enhancer Game where players can pick up multiple power-ups, alongside tweaks to the math model using internal data and player feedback to make the experience, in their words, ‘more action-packed and dynamic.’

“Magically enchanting” is the first description that came to mind when taking in Pond of Plinko’s world. To be fair, all of Print’s Plinko slots have nailed this vibe—from the living-in-a-pine-cone feel of the original, to the snow pine cone cuckoo clock setting of the sequel, and now to Pond of Plinko’s mountain-side aquatic surroundings. It’s ridiculously charming on the surface; it can be charming for your balance too, but it can also turn savage, depending on how those balls and pearls decide to fall.

Pond of Plinko is divided into a reel-based main game and a Plinko board bonus round. In the base game, you get a 5×3 gaming grid with 20 paylines, forming wins from the leftmost reel onwards. The math model scores a 10 out of 10 for volatility, meaning it’s as extreme as it gets, while the default RTP sits at 96.1% to 96.49%, depending on how players re-roll the number shown on each landed scatter (more on that shortly). For stakes, the bet range runs from 10 c to $/€30 per spin.

The low-paying symbols are swirly, whirly shapes in green, yellow, and purple, paying 2.5 to 3 times their bet for a 5 OAK win. Above them sit 4 character symbols, which return 5 to 200 times the bet for a 5-of-a-kind hit. Pond of Plinko does not feature any wild symbols on the reels.

Pond of Plinko: Slot Features

Alongside Pond of Plinko’s headline Plinko Bonus round, the base game also includes a River Prize Feature, an Enhancer Game, 6 Enhancers, and feature buys.

River Prize Feature

On any spin, water can wash over the reels and reveal prizes worth up to 10,000x. Each time a ball drops into one of the holes, its prize meter increases. Once a prize meter is full, it awards its prize and the feature ends. Rewards can land anywhere from 10x to 10,000x.

Plinko Bonus & Enhancer Game

Hitting at least 3 scatter symbols activates the Plinko Bonus. Scatter symbols display a number, and adding those numbers together determines the number of pearls available in the Enhancer Game. Before moving on, players have the choice of re-rolling the number on each scatter for the shown cost. Next, the Enhancer Game decides how many Enhancers will be available in the Plinko Game. Tapping or holding the button drops pearls. When pearls strike a bumper, the relevant meter increases. When a meter is filled, +1 Enhancer is granted. After the drops finish, the Plinko Game begins.

Enhancers

Pond of Plinko includes 6 types of Enhancers. Every collected Enhancer is applied to one of the stages in the Plinko Game, and up to 3 Enhancers can be collected per stage.

• Bumper Buckets – changes 2 of the centre prize buckets into bumpers. If a ball lands in a Bumper Bucket, it is sent back to the top.
• Golden Ball – enables 2 Golden Pockets on the board. When a ball lands in one of these pockets, a Golden Ball is awarded at the end of the stage. During the Golden Ball drop, one ball falls, and all buckets carry increased prizes of up to 10,000x.
• Extra Drops – awards up to 7 extra drops.
• Progressive Prize Buckets – selects 2 random buckets and boosts their multiplier by their starting value every time a ball lands in them.
• Enhanced Prize Buckets – multiplies 1 of the prize buckets by 10.
• Barriers – turns on 2 barriers on the board, pushing balls toward the sides.

Plinko Game

The Plinko Game is made up of 9 stages. Each stage begins with 10 drops, and whenever a ball lands in one of the 15 prize buckets at the bottom, the shown prize is awarded. A meter at the top shows the available Enhancers, the stage progress and the current stage. The number on each stage marker indicates how many balls will be released per drop for that stage. As you advance to a new stage, the ball count doubles per drop, rising up to 256 per drop.

Striking a bumper in the centre of the board progresses the progress bar. Once the progress bar is filled, the next stage that’s available becomes unlocked. When all drops in the current stage are spent, the next unlocked stage starts, or if no additional stages are unlocked, the Plinko Bonus ends.

Feature Bet

The Feature Bet offers these selectable options: Scatter Boost (1.2x the bet) – increases the frequency of triggering the Plinko Bonus by a factor of 50.05%, Enhanced Scatter Boost (2x the bet) – increases the frequency of triggering the Plinko Bonus by a factor of 239.36%, or Plinko Bonus (100x the bet).

Pond of Plinko: Slot Verdict

Credit to Print Studios for taking an already massively entertaining Plinko series and layering in extra depth to make it even more edge-of-your-seat. The base game isn’t really why most players will load this up, but it works as a decent lead-in, and the River Prize Feature can still pop up with something worthwhile, giving you a reason to stay alert. Still, the Plinko Game bonus round is clearly the star, and the additions Print Studios has introduced improve the feature in a number of ways.

It begins with the scatters: just like in Pine of Plinko, they land with numbers on them. This time, though, those numbers don’t set the number of drops in the Plinko feature—they decide how many drops you get in the Enhancer Game. Bigger is better, although it’s probably wise not to hammer the re-roll button on every scatter, since the cost can stack up fast with no promise of an upgrade. That’s gambling for you, of course, and there’s always the possibility a larger number appears. In testing, having more drops in the Enhancer Game and unlocking additional Enhancers seemed to noticeably influence the Plinko Game itself. The enhancers are enjoyable too, each one contributing to the chance of lifting the final outcome. As with the previous two Plinko slots, the real magic in Pond of Plinko is watching waves of balls pour down the board, smashing bumpers to push into the next stage where even more balls are released, and building toward a satisfyingly hefty total along the way.

Three Plinko slots back-to-back could have felt like an exhausting idea if it had been handled by a “lesser” developer, for lack of a better term. In Print Studios’ hands, though, Pond of Plinko keeps what worked before, adds a stack of exciting extras, and raises the win cap to 30,000x the bet for a ride that’s thrilling, tempting, sometimes aggravating, and potentially very rewarding.