Pirots 2

Pirots 2 is a pirate-and-dinosaur slot from ELK Studios, and I have rarely played a game that ignores so many of the conventions I expect from a slot. No paylines. No reels in the usual sense. Just a grid, four birds, and a pile of amber to be eaten.

• Provider: Elk Studios
• Reels: 6-8
• Hit Freq: 25.4%
• Paylines: CollectR™
• RTP: 94.00%
• Max Win: 10,000x
• Volatility: High (8/10)
• Min/Max Bet: R0.60/R600
• Release Date: 7 November 2023

There is no shortage of jungle slots, but they tend to be Mesoamerican or African affairs with the odd temple thrown in. A prehistoric jungle is rarer. Except Pirots 2 is not really prehistoric at all. The intro video shows the birds, the Pirots, riding a tram through what turns out to be a dinosaur theme park called Dinoland, hunting for barrels of rum. So I was looking at a jungle with dinosaurs, which is also a roller coaster park. A roller coaster track even loops through the trees in the background while a velociraptor pads about below. Once I stopped trying to make sense of it, I got on much better.

The birds themselves carry over from the first Pirots. Same boldly coloured feathers, same human-style clothing, same single-minded interest in rum. If you played the first game, you will recognise the four of them straight away, often called the Fearful Four. If you did not, the short version is that these birds do the work that paylines do in an ordinary slot, collecting amber to trigger wins.

The Pirots 2 slot game plays on a 6×6 grid that expands to 8×8 when features activate. The soundtrack does its best Jurassic Park impression in the busier moments. It builds tension well, even if the licensing department could raise an eyebrow.

RTP and Volatility

The RTP on Pirots 2 sits at 94%. That is below the 96% mark I treat as the line between a fair return and a stingy one, and I would want to know it before loading up. ELK runs this number consistently whether you bet small or buy a feature.

On volatility, ELK’s own game data sheet rates it 8 out of 10, which is firmly high. That matched my experience: long stretches of nothing marked by the occasional big collect, which is the trade-off for that 10,000x potential.

The headline numbers: max win is 10,000x your bet, hit frequency is 25.4%, and max exposure is capped at 1,000,000 coins. Bet levels run from 0.20 to 100 per spin in the data sheet’s base currency, and the South African rand is one of the supported currencies, so you can play in ZAR at a licensed operator.

Pirots 2 Slot Game

How You Win

Here is where Pirots 2 stops behaving like a normal slot. When a spin starts, symbols drop onto the grid, and so do four bird collectors: one blue, one green, one purple, one red. Each bird collects amber of its own colour from the squares adjacent to it in orthogonal directions. Collect amber, generate a win, and the collected square clears. The birds keep moving and collecting in descending order of payout until none of them can reach any more matching amber.

A few wrinkles make it more involved than that. Birds can switch places with an adjacent bird, but only if the swap unlocks new amber to collect. If three or four birds line up horizontally or vertically, they fight, clearing the amber and grabbing any scatters, coins, eggs, or red buttons in the line before the birds are redropped and the grid refills. And every collect feeds avalanches, or tumbles if you prefer, where cleared squares are replaced for another go at a win on the same spin.

Amber is not a flat-value symbol either. Each of the four colours can be upgraded through seven levels. At the bottom, an amber symbol is worth 0.05x to 0.1x your bet. At level 7, it is worth 10x to 50x the bet per colour, with red being the most valuable. Pushing amber up those levels is where I found most of the real money.

Feature Symbols

There are eight feature symbols. They land randomly, drop out of the collection meter, or appear through other features, and each does something specific when a bird collects it.

• Upgrade: raises one amber colour by one to three levels.
• Upgrade all: raises all four amber colours by one to three levels.
• Coins: pay their displayed value. A MAX WIN coin awards whatever is left to reach the 10,000x ceiling.
• Wild: substitutes for any amber with its current payout level.
• Red Button: triggers a meteor strike that blows up symbols (not feature symbols) and expands the grid.
• Egg: hatches a dinosaur at the end of the round, scaring the birds into new positions.
• Popcorn fills empty squares, so birds can cross gaps once each to reach amber elsewhere.
• Mushroom: turns a cluster of amber next to a bird into that bird’s colour and can convert some amber into feature symbols.

Above the grid sits the collection meter, tracking the amber and wilds collected. Fill it, and you bank a feature symbol release, and you can stack up to three releases at once. Each release converts a batch of random amber into random feature symbols, which is how I watched a quiet-looking grid suddenly cascade into something way bigger.

Pirots 2 Slot Game Super Bonus

Free Spins Bonus Game

Collect three dino skull scatters in the base game, and you get the bonus, which ELK calls free drops but which works like free spins everywhere else. You start with five.

The clever part is that nothing resets. The grid size, the collection meter progress, the amber payout levels and any scatters collected all carry over into the bonus, so a bonus triggered from a hot base game starts in a much stronger position than one triggered cold. Collect three more scatters during the bonus to earn additional spins. Any pending feature releases are dumped into the first drop.

X-iter Feature Buys

If you would rather not wait, X-iter lets you buy your way in at five price points:

• Bonus Hunt: 3x bet for a drop, with more than 3x the chance to trigger the bonus.
• Popcorn Fiesta: 10x bet for a drop with popcorn active.
• Maximum Grid Size: 25x bet for a drop on the full 8×8 grid.
• Bonus: 100x bet to buy the free spins round.
• Super Bonus: 500x bet for the free spins round on the maximum grid, with upgrade and instant-pay behaviour cranked up.

Feature buys retain the same 94% RTP, so they are not a shortcut to better odds, just to the part of the game you actually want to play.

Pros

• Original win mechanic
• 10,000x max win with multiple routes to get there
• Persistent bonus state rewards a strong base game run
• High production values on graphics and sound.
• Five X-iter buy options give you control over how you play.

Cons

• 94% RTP is below the common 96% benchmark.
• Game rounds can run very long, which will not suit fast players.

ELK Studios makes some of the most creative slots going, and Pirots 2 sits squarely in that tradition. It is polished, it looks the part, and the CollectR mechanic is a properly different way to win rather than a fresh coat of paint on tumbling reels. I found real depth here once the amber upgrades, the collection meter and the feature symbols started interacting. The catch is that the same depth rounds can be slow, sometimes very slow, and I watched a lot happen on screen without much landing in my balance.

The 94% RTP does not help, sitting under the 96% you will find elsewhere, and the high volatility means the gaps between wins can test your endurance and your budget.

So it comes down to what you want from a session. If you treat RTP as the whole story, there are better-value slots out there, and this is not the one I would point you to. If you enjoy watching a strange little system play out, with the upside of a 10,000x ceiling at the end, Pirots 2 earns its place. In my view, it is a game people tend to love or leave rather than feel lukewarm about. As always, set a budget before you spin and stick to it.

Play our free Pirots 2 demo slot game: