The Great Chicken Escape (Pragmatic Play): Overview

It only took a handful of spins for us to notice the familiar patterns, and it probably won’t take you long either—especially if you live somewhere you can play Blueprint slots online. Pragmatic Play has long struggled to shake off a “samey” vibe across many releases, and the studio isn’t exactly celebrated for pushing boundaries. More recently, though, they’ve gone even further than usual, openly borrowing from other titles, with the Montezuma-leaning John Hunter and the Aztec Treasure being one of the clearest examples.

That said, before we start accusing anyone, it’s worth noting that Pragmatic Play has also been on the receiving end of the copy-and-paste treatment. In this case, it was Blueprint Gaming, whose Wolf Legend Megaways felt far too close to Pragmatic’s Wolf Run to dismiss as coincidence. With The Great Chicken Escape, as you’ll soon see, it’s fair to say Pragmatic Play has opted to fire back.

Using a prisoner-of-war setup to tell the story of chickens escaping their farm, The Great Chicken Escape appears to be loosely inspired by the 2000 stop-motion comedy Chicken Run—at least that’s our assumption. In this 5-reel, 20 payline Pragmatic Play slot, you’ll have access to a strong mix of mechanics, including extra wilds, wild reels, and symbol transformations—each available in the base game and able to trigger randomly on any spin. On top of that, there are five bonus games, with potential winnings reaching 5000 times your stake. You can help the chickens make their getaway on any device, with stakes ranging from 20 cents to 100€/$ per spin.

With high volatility and a default RTP of 96.5%, the gameplay unfolds in what’s essentially a chicken concentration camp—thankfully presented in a cartoonish art style. Hen houses line the background, while the reels feature fairly standard A to J card symbols for the lower values. The bigger payouts come from the four chicken characters, with the red-beret chicken sitting at the top, awarding 25 times your stake for landing 5 on a payline.

The Great Chicken Escape (Pragmatic Play): Features

The Great Chicken Escape comes loaded with features. Even in the base game, you can benefit from three randomly triggered Modifiers. These are:

• Guard Dog Wilds – the guard dog gets knocked out, causing him to place between 4 and 9 wilds in random reel positions.
• Chicken Run Wilds – the sergeant chicken tries to scale the walls, which can result in 2 to 4 fully stacked wild reels.
• Care Package – a wooden crate drops onto the sergeant chicken, breaking open and scattering golden eggs across the reels. After the spin is completed, any golden eggs that landed transform into a matching regular symbol.

There’s more to uncover if you land 3 or 4 scatter symbols—this triggers a random Bonus feature that you can either take immediately or gamble in an attempt to upgrade to a stronger one. Altogether, there are 5 bonuses available:

• Secret Tunnel Bonus – Three chests appear on the screen and you choose one to reveal either a cash prize, the Mystery Tunnel feature, or collect, which ends the bonus. If Mystery Tunnel is revealed, you then pick one of four entrances, with one leading to any of the four features listed below.
• Poultry in Motion – Select eggs to uncover how many steps you move along the multiplier trail. If “Collect” appears, the feature ends. If you reach the end of the trail, you gain entry to the Big Money Bonus round.
• Get Clucky Free Spins – You receive 10 free spins, and every wild symbol that lands increases the win multiplier by 1x.
• To the Other Side Free Spins – You play 9 free spins, during which all wild symbols that appear are collected and then placed in random positions on a 10th and final spin.
• The Great Escape Big Money Bonus – A carousel of 12 barrels is shown, each holding a cash reward from 10x up to 500x. You then pick a golden egg, which reveals either respin or collect. This is the highest-paying feature and can deliver a top win of 5000 times your stake.

The Great Chicken Escape (Pragmatic Play): Verdict

Pragmatic Play has essentially treated Blueprint as the blueprint for The Great Chicken Escape, clearly examining its rival’s formula and replicating it down to the smallest details. And to be fair, it’s a pretty effective clone—one that could easily pass as something from the Blueprint Gaming catalogue—though it doesn’t quite match Blueprint’s visual polish. If Blueprint slots aren’t available to you and you’ve been interested in games like Thundercats, Beavis and Butthead, and The Goonies, The Great Chicken Escape is a reasonable substitute to check out.

It’s also worth mentioning that the game looks less generic than Pragmatic’s usual output, and it feels like real effort went into the build. That only reinforces the impression that Pragmatic Play has done everything possible to compete with Blueprint on their own turf—and to irritate them as much as they can. Now we’re just waiting to see how Blueprint responds.