If you are fan of J.M.Barrie’s most famous creation, Peter Pan, then you will no doubt be very familiar with both the Disney cartoon film version and the Spielberg remake “Hook” (which starred 
Dustin Hoffman in the title role and Robin Williams as his nemesis Peter Pan). What we have here is Hook’s Heroes, a new slot from NetEnt which is a new take on the classic tale. Instead of the millions spent on a Hollywood production, this Hook’s Heroes slot is based more on a school production of the tale.
Rather then the moustachioed villain that is instantly recognisable from celluloid, what you have here are a group of young kids who are playing the role of Hook and his crew against a backdrop of a simple yet well-designed school play setting. It is all rather cleverly imagined and makes this slot appeal immediately because it offers a completely different twist on the story. Of course, the young Captain Hook still has his trademark hook replacing his hand, but there is a gentleness and subtlety to the slot that makes it radically different to the game it could have been, had it been based on either of the famous films.
The slot itself is a 5×3 reel game which has 20 paylines in play on every spin. You cannot alter the number paylines on each spin, but you can increase or decrease the individual Coin Size (from 0.01 up to 1.00) and the Level you are playing on (the number of coins wagered on each payline) to allow you to make larger or smaller wagers dependent on your bankroll and own preference. Ā This means you can bet from a minimum of $0.20 up to a maximum of $200 per spin and that offers an excellent range of bets to suit players of all bankroll sizes.
Key Information
Once you have decided how much to wager, you can use the Autoplay or Spin button to get the reels spinning, a handy tip is to double click the spin button to play through your spins more quickly, ideal if you are pressed for time but want to play the maximum number of spins in the time available. The symbols on the reels consist of lower value playing card symbols (10 through to Ace) and the higher value symbols are all the members of Hooks young crew. These offer payouts from 20 coins up to a maximum of 900 coins when you land the highest value standard symbol on one of the paylines.
Increasing your chances of a win in the base game is the Wild symbol. This is Captain Hook and this is used solely to substitute for higher and lower value symbols to create winning paylines. There is no payout for Wilds across a payline, but the more wilds you land across the reels, the greater your chances of triggering at least one, if not considerably more pay line wins on a single spin and the chances are these wins will be larger in value the more Wilds you can land.
Everything sounds all rather formulaic thus far but things do get a lot more interesting when we start to look at the bonus features and how they are incorporated into the Hooks Heroes slot. Ā There are two different Scatter symbols on the reels and landing three of these symbols anywhere across the reels will instigate the Free Spins bonus.
Now, this is a bonus with a difference. Land three scatters and you get to pick one of the three available games to play through. Land four, you can pick two of the three games, but land five scatters and you can pick all three of the games to play through as your bonus. This means the more scatters you land, the more bonuses you can play through and the better your chances are of landing a bigger win.
The three games you can select to play are as follows:
- Fairy Feature Spins – 7 Free spins and on each spin between 2 and 5 Wilds will appear on the reels in random positions, offering you the chance of a bigger value win.
- Mermaid Feature Spins – 10 Free Spins with a 2x multiplier. If you land a payline with a Wild, then the multiplier value on that win increases to 4x the amount.
- Pirate Free Spins – 15 Free Spins and instead of 20 pay lines, you just need to land the same symbol on adjacent reels across the slot to trigger a win. Ā During this bonus feature the Wild symbol is removed from the reels for the duration of the round.
However, that isn’t all as you can trigger one free spin by landing two scatter symbols on the real as the Feature Bonus.Ā When this happens, one of the three bonus games outlined above is selected at random and you receive one free spin with that bonus applied.
How to win at the Hook’s Heroes slot
As with most NetEnt slots, there’s no choice in the number of paylines in play, so in order to win more at this slot you need to play the right bonuses and hit the right paylines.
The first thing to note is that the potential rewards on offer in each of the three bonus games areĀ not the same. With the Fairy Feature and Pirate Free Spins games, the maximum win you can land is 45x the players stake. However, thanks to the 4x multiplier available as part of it, the Mermaid Feature offers players the chance to win up to 180 times their stake. That is important to know when you are considering which of the Free Spins games to pick when you do eventually trigger them. Of course that doesn’t mean you will win more playing the Mermaid Feature Spins option, simply that the potential for a bigger win is there.
It is also worth noting that this is a medium to lower variance game and that means wins are regular but generally small in the base game but these wins are interspersed with bigger wins from time to time which do boost your bankroll. Budgeting for a decent length of session on the slot over the longer term will generally yield more favourable results over that time period than playing for a shorter time.
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