Play Demo
Eighteen spins without a single hit. Not a partial, not a tease, not even a consolation scatter. The calming piano melody that greets you when Pirots 2 loads starts to feel like a lullaby when you’re trying to stay awake.
Elk Studios’ sequel to their CollectR-powered original drops the Fearful Four into a prehistoric jungle where dinosaurs wander the background and a rollercoaster track snakes through the canopy, but the real adventure here is patience. This dinosaur themed slot runs a 6×6 grid that expands up to 8×8, and with 94% RTP and a 10,000x cap, every extended drought feels like it’s building toward something. Whether it delivers is another question entirely.
Pirots 2 ditches paylines entirely. Four coloured birds (red, purple, green, and blue) land on the grid alongside amber symbols and feature icons each drop. Each bird moves across the grid collecting amber symbols that match its own colour, plus any feature symbols in its path. Movement is horizontal and vertical only, and birds can backtrack if needed.
When adjacent birds can unlock new clusters by swapping positions, they will. If three or four birds align in a row or column, a Bird Fight triggers, clearing amber and collecting any feature symbols caught in the crossfire.
The amber symbols that generate your wins start at payout level 1 and can be upgraded through seven tiers. A standard upgrade symbol boosts one colour by 1 to 3 steps. The upgrade-all symbol raises every colour simultaneously by the same 1–3 range. Maximum payout level is 7, and reaching it on even one colour transforms the value of every collection. Red amber at level 7 pays 50x per symbol collected at a £1 stake.
The gap between level 1 (0.10x) and level 7 is enormous, making upgrades the single most important progression system during any round.
Eight feature symbols populate the grid and each does something different when collected by a bird. Coin symbols pay their printed value multiplied by the active bet level, with a dedicated Max Win coin that instantly pays whatever remains to reach the 10,000x cap. The wild substitutes for any amber at the collecting bird’s current payout level. Then there are the environmental features that reshape the grid itself.
The red button (stamped “Don’t Press”) triggers a meteor strike that explodes symbols and expands the grid one step, from 6×6 to 7×7 or 7×7 to the full 8×8. Egg symbols hatch a dinosaur at the end of the round, scaring all birds off the grid and forcing them to redrop in new positions. Popcorn fills empty grid spaces when collected, letting birds cross gaps they otherwise couldn’t reach. The transform symbol (a mushroom) converts a cluster of adjacent amber into the same colour as the bird that collected it, and may randomly turn additional amber into feature symbols.
Three bonus symbols (fossil skulls) collected during a single round trigger the Free Drops bonus game with 5 free drops. Grid size, feature meter progress, amber payout levels, and any collected bonus symbols all carry over from the triggering round. Collecting three more bonus symbols during the bonus awards an additional 5 drops. The persistence is key here, because entering with upgraded ambers or an expanded grid gives the bonus round a dramatically different starting position than triggering it from a base-level 6×6.
Elk Studios’ X-iter panel offers five modes at escalating costs. Bonus Hunt (3x bet) quadruples the chance of triggering a bonus naturally. Popcorn Fiesta (10x) activates a popcorn feature immediately. Play mode (25x) adds unspecified enhancements. The Bonus Game buy (100x) jumps straight into Free Drops. Super Bonus (500x) launches the bonus on a fully expanded 8×8 grid with all upgrade symbols applying to every colour. The RTP remains fixed at 94% across all modes, as the info screen shows.
Forget everything you know about matching symbols on lines or adjacent clusters. Pirots 2 uses a collection system where the four birds do the work for you, moving across the grid gobbling amber of their own colour and any feature symbols they pass. You set a bet between £0.20 and £100, press spin, and then watch as the birds navigate the 6×6 grid (expandable to 8×8) picking up everything in reach. Collected symbols are removed and new ones drop in from above, which can trigger further collection chains in the same round. A feature meter tracks every collected symbol; fill it and three chests of random feature symbols are awarded.
The 25.4% hit frequency means roughly one in four drops produces a win in free play, though “win” can be as small as a single level-1 amber collection. The demo runs identically to the paid version across all modes. Long stretches of nothing are standard operating procedure for this format. With volatility rated at 8/10 by Elk Studios, the balance can erode quickly during standard play, and the bonus round is where the real value concentrates.
The table below shows per-symbol collection values at a £1.00 stake across all seven upgrade tiers.
| Level | Red | Purple | Green | Blue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 (Max) | £50.00 | £20.00 | £15.00 | £10.00 |
| 6 | £10.00 | £5.00 | £3.75 | £2.50 |
| 5 | £3.00 | £1.60 | £1.20 | £0.80 |
| 4 | £1.00 | £0.60 | £0.45 | £0.30 |
| 3 | £0.60 | £0.40 | £0.30 | £0.20 |
| 2 | £0.25 | £0.20 | £0.15 | £0.10 |
| 1 (Start) | £0.10 | £0.10 | £0.05 | £0.05 |
| Mode | Cost (×Bet) |
|---|---|
| Bonus Hunt | 3x |
| Popcorn Fiesta | 10x |
| Play | 25x |
| Bonus Game | 100x |
| Super Bonus | 500x |
Pirots 2 is ambitious, complex, and deeply frustrating in almost equal measure. Elk Studios have built something genuinely unlike anything else in the slot catalogue, and the CollectR system rewards players who invest time understanding it. But a 94% RTP, glacial pacing, and bonus rounds that can underdeliver after a 100x buy make this a tough recommendation for anyone except dedicated Elk Studios fans.
The opening cutscene sets expectations high. Animated and cinematic, it drops you into a jungle amusement park where the four Pirot birds strut around like they own the place. A Triceratops grazes in the background. The orchestral soundtrack leans heavily on a Jurassic Park-inspired score that builds drama during feature chains and settles into a piano melody between drops.
Then the game starts, and reality hits. Our session opened with 18 consecutive drops that produced nothing. Not a partial collection, not a stray feature symbol. When the first hit finally landed at spin 18, it returned 0.5x. At that point we switched to the X-iter panel and bought the Bonus Game for 100x. The bonus itself started filling the CollectR meter and triggering feature chains, but the volume of interacting systems made it genuinely difficult to track what was happening on screen. Birds eating gems, meters filling, symbols transforming, and somewhere in the chaos, credits ticking up. The five Free Drops played out slowly, and the final tally landed at 21x, not even a quarter of the buy cost recovered.
That result is consistent with a game running 94% RTP at high volatility. Bonus rounds will underperform more often than they deliver. Elk Studios have built the CollectR engine to produce moments of cascading chaos where upgrades, grid expansions, and feature chains compound into something spectacular. When it clicks, the persistent upgrade system means a well-stocked bonus round could run and run. But our session was a demonstration of the other side of that volatility curve.
Pirots 2 belongs to a specific audience. Players who enjoy watching complex systems interact, who find the Pac-Man-style collection format more engaging than spinning reels, and who have the patience for extended dry spells will find something to appreciate here. For everyone else, the combination of below-average RTP, slow pacing, and opaque game rounds makes this a hard sell. The Pirots series has expanded to five entries now, suggesting Elk Studios found their audience, but this review is a reminder that not every session will remind you why.
Our flamboyant and funky Pirots led us to a lacklustre result overall.
A 21x payout from a 100x bet showcases the high variance of this slot.
