More From Eyecon
Five hippos pay 200x on these reels. Four pay 20x, three pay 4x, and two pay 0.4x. Those are the values Eyecon set on the 2006 Fluffy Favourites, and this December 2017 follow-up repeats them to the decimal. One symbol changes. The Claw that opened the pick bonus is a striped Big-Top tent here, and the pick round behind it works the same way. Everything else is the shared Eyecon classic chassis: 25 fixed lines, an Elephant that stands in for the toys, and a scattered trigger for the free games.
The tent is the new symbol on the reels, and it arrives in a gold frame rather than the blue backing behind the toys. Three or more tents landing anywhere start the Prize Pick. Each tent in the triggering combination buys one pick, so five tents means five picks, and a pick can award up to 100x. Prizes from the picks are added together and paid out as a single amount. On its own, the tent does nothing. A lone one on reel 3 pays no prize and starts nothing, which makes it a symbol you count rather than a symbol you collect. Five is the most the grid can show at once, one to a reel, so a Prize Pick runs to five picks at the very most.
Fifteen retriggers is the point at which the round stops, and that limit is absolute. Reaching it takes repeat Elephants, because three anywhere open 15 free games, four open 20, and five open 25, and a fresh trio inside the round extends it again. For the length of the feature, line wins pay at triple rates, with the stake and the 25-line count from the triggering spin carried straight through. The pink Elephant is also the substitute, so a trigger and a doubled line win can land together. Position doesn’t matter to the count either. Elephants are read wherever they stop, which means a scattered set on reels 1, 3, and 5 opens the round as readily as three sitting side by side.
The Elephant stands in for every toy except the tent. When it completes a line, that line pays twice its table value, and inside the feature the two multipliers stack, so a line the Elephant fills returns six times the table figure. No meters, no progressive counter, and no upgrades back any of that. The multiplier arrives with the symbol, or it doesn’t arrive at all.
The help panels caption both the tent and the Elephant “Scatter”, which is accurate and confusing at the same time. They do different jobs. The tent scatters into the Prize Pick and substitutes for nothing; the Elephant scatters into the free games and stands in for every other symbol on the board. Read the panels quickly, and you can come away expecting one symbol to do both jobs. On the reels, they are easy to separate: the tent in its gold frame and the Elephant in pink.
The cast is the plush set the family has always used: hippo, dragon, monkey, panda, lion, turtle, giraffe, rhino, duck, and clownfish, drawn as soft toys rather than as animals. What moves is the stage. A Ferris wheel turns behind the left reels, a striped tent stands on the right under a rainbow, bunting runs across the grass, and a row of bulbs frames the bottom of the reel window and stays lit while the reels turn. Anyone working through the site’s animal slots will find harder art than this. The demo here is free play in the same shell an operator loads. The reel panel behind the toys is the same flat blue the family has always used, and each toy is lit from the front, so the plush texture still reads at phone size.
Fairground arrived in December 2017, 11 years after the original and 18 months after Fluffy Too, and it is the first entry in the family built as a reskin rather than as a sequel. Fluffy Too swapped the Claw for a Coin Pusher and moved the toys to a seaside pier. Fairground leaves the pick round alone and changes the trigger symbol and the backdrop instead. All three share the same ladder. A progressive edition, Fluffy Favourites Fairground Jackpot, is sold to operators as a separate game. Choosing between the family’s entries is a choice of backdrop and trigger symbol, not of maths.
The return to player in the slot rules is 95.388%, and that is the version the demo uses. The game ships in two builds, and the spread between the higher and the lower is roughly two points, so an operator’s copy can return less than this one. Eyecon files the game under its high-volatility rating, a reading the 200x top-line and the 15 retrigger free games back up. The help specifies no minimum or maximum stake, and the line count is fixed at 25. That arrangement is standard across the Eyecon classics.
Nothing in the rules prints a maximum win, so the top row is as far as one line goes: 200x for five hippos. Under it, the ladder is built in twos. The dragon has the second tier alone at 40x; monkey and panda share 20x; lion and turtle share 12x; giraffe and rhino share 8x; and duck and clownfish share 4x. Four symbols pay from two, and the rest need three.
| Symbol | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hippo | 0.4x | 4x | 20x | 200x |
| Dragon | 0.2x | 1.2x | 4x | 40x |
| Monkey | 0.08x | 0.6x | 3x | 20x |
| Panda | 0.08x | 0.6x | 3x | 20x |
| Lion | n/a | 0.4x | 1.6x | 12x |
| Turtle | n/a | 0.4x | 1.6x | 12x |
| Giraffe | n/a | 0.2x | 1.2x | 8x |
| Rhino | n/a | 0.2x | 1.2x | 8x |
| Duck | n/a | 0.12x | 0.6x | 4x |
| Clownfish | n/a | 0.12x | 0.6x | 4x |
A reskin that changed one symbol and left every number where it was. The tent suits the game better than the claw did, the Prize Pick still pays in one lump, and the 200x top line is exactly what it was in 2006.
200x. That is the most one line pays on this 25-line slot, five hippos from reel 1 across, and it has been 200x since 2006. The Elephant can double that line and the free games can treble it, but the sheet underneath hasn’t moved a decimal in 11 years. A follow-up that keeps every value is rare. Most of them nudge something so the new name has something to stand on.
So, the tent is what there is to review, and it’s the right swap. A claw machine is a piece of arcade furniture; a big top belongs on a fairground, and it works with the wheel, the bunting, and the bulbs around the reel window rather than against them. The toys are untouched, which they should be, because they are the reason the family sells. Look at the frame for any length of time, though, and the fairground turns out to be scenery. The wheel rotates, the bulbs stay lit, and nothing out there responds to what happens on the reels. For a 2017 release, that is dated. For this family, it is in character.
What the tent triggers is still the best part of the game. Three tents anywhere is a modest ask; the picks are one per tent, and each can return up to 100x, with the results added together. A round that pays in one lump reads better than a spins round that leaks value in small pieces, and it lands often enough to be the thing a player watches for. It also explains where the game’s volatility comes from. Ordinary spins can’t reach those figures, so the tents and the Elephants carry the whole upper half of the pay curve between them.
Against that, standard play is thin. Four symbols pay from two, which keeps small returns coming in, and at 0.4x, 0.2x, and 0.08x, most of those land below the cost of the spin they came from. The return is on the low side of the industry’s middle, and the high volatility rating means the free games are doing the heavy lifting. Between features, there is nothing to build, nothing to collect, and no meter filling at the edge of the board.
For the player who already likes these toys, the fairground is the better room to see them in; the demo is the cheapest way to decide whether the backdrop is worth the switch; and the tent appears often enough in ordinary play to show how the pick round feels. For anyone who wants the same animals drawn as animals, something like Safari Wonders is a different proposition altogether. The appeal here is plush, a tent, and one pick round that pays in a single figure.
