Hugo Legacy Slot Review

21/08/2023 | Categories: Play'n GO Slots | Published by: Joe | Last updated: 05/01/2024

It seems that renowned Swedish game provider Play’n GO is trying to give Malta’s Pragmatic Play a run for its money as the sector’s most prolific slot supplier, as it now also churns out around six titles from this genre pre-month onto the interactive gaming landscape. It opened up in August 2023 with Honey Rush 100 and Boat Bonanza Colossal Catch, unleashing both products on the first of that month, and a week later, Play’n GO released Hugo Legacy. Here is a colorful spinner that almost instantly made its way into the top ten rankings in multiple markets, even hitting the number one spot in South Korea. Given the high-profile nature of this game, we thought we’d give it a look and expose our readers to this fresh Play’n GO creation.

Theme & Design

If you have been a pop culture connoisseur as a child and lived in the Western World, it is likely that, at some point or another, you have come across the character of Hugo. He is a troll based on Scandinavian folklore who battles a dastardly witch to help a family. In essence, Hugo is an entire media franchise created by Denmark’s ITE Media, or Interactive Television Entertainment, aimed at children, which started as a game show but then spawned loads of video games and various merchandise.

Play’n GO has five Hugo games, with the first entry hitting the market in August 2016. Trolls, as a theme, are not what some would call a super popular slot motif, but still, around fifty products from this category do exist, with the most famous ones other than an entry in Play’n GO’s Hugo series being Kingdoms Rise Chasm of Fear by Playtech Origins, and Eyecon’s Kingdom of Cash.

Audio-visually, Hugo Legacy, called this because this game dropped around three decades after this character’s debut, is a bit cliched. The incorporated music in this slot is similar to that of many other animal-theme releases from Play’n GO or other providers aiming to mold a charming, light-hearted atmosphere. Hence, it is upbeat and not tension-inducing. Hugo stands on a rock left of the wooden-framed reel grid, which rests in the middle of the green field. He has a 3D feel and is slightly animated. Though, we must say that the presentation here is not very dynamic. And it feels somewhat faithful to the game show but with a typical slot twist.

In general, it did not dazzle us, and this spinner boasts the traditional Play’n GO button setup, with the bet adjuster in the middle, the spin functions to the right, and the balance info on the left. The sound effects are par the course, but we will complement them, as they fit nicely into the overall built vibe and do not seem over-intrusive. They mix in well with the 1990s, uplifting film-like soundtrack.

Hugo Legacy Slot

Specs & Gameplay

Hugo Legacy is a cluster-pay cascading game that lists a max win of x3,000, a wagering range moving from $0.1 to $100, high variance, and an RTP of 96.2%. The grid featured here is a 7×7 one, and Play’n GO has not publicized a hit frequency for this release.

Since this is an avalanche/cascading slot, that means that when a win forms, the tokens part of it disappears, leaving caps on the 7×7 layout for new ones to take their places, fashioning new opportunities for prize combos. Wins here form when identical symbols land connected in horizontal or vertical directions. The symbols of Hugo Legacy are low-pay items (a key, sticks of dynamite, a cart of gold, gold bars, and a conductor’s hat), supplying rewards from x40 to x200 (from clusters of +20), and high-pay characters, yielding wins of x400 to x1,000, from groups of twenty or more matching ones materializing on the grid on the same spin.

A diamond is the wild symbol of this game, substituting regular pay tokens.

Bonus Features

So, what are the bonus features of Hugo Legacy? First up is the Telephone meter. It gets charged by +1 via every winning symbol. At a charge level of fifteen, the game triggers a modifier, and when you reach the thirty fifth one, you activate the free spins mode. There are five modifiers. They are Hugo, Scylla, Don Croco, Fernando, and Jeal Paul. They are the character tokens, and in this scenario, they complete various tasks. For example, Hugo adds five to eight wilds, and Scylla protects one/two token types and destroys the rest. Don Croco modifies up to five symbols into different categories of tokens. Fernando transforms symbols into wilds, and Jean-Paul builds a winning cluster based on a selected image.

As mentioned, when you get thirty-five charges, you trigger the default free spins, and with forty, forty-five, or fifty, you activate a stronger version of this round. In the thirty-five-charge variant, the Telephone gives you two modifiers. For forty, it supplies three. For forty-five, it provides four with five wilds collected. And for five more, it awarded thirty wilds collected and five modifiers. When you activate this mode, you access a gambling feature that allows you to reach higher levels. Note that collected wilds get added back in subsequent phases in this game.

Hugo Legacy Slot

GOSU Verdict

Hugo Legacy did not wow us. The main character has a distinct charisma to him, and we enjoyed this slot’s light-hearted vibe. Yet, it felt a bit generic and a sizeable departure from its predecessor, Hugo Carts. The max win in this Play’n GO release is much lower than in that title, and while oftentimes desirable, the cascading and cluster-pay mechanics do not do loads to capture a high degree of reel-spinning magic here. It is not that this game is, by any account, horrible. It just did not do it for us. We know that many of our readers like collection-infused gameplay, so we are sure that Hugo Legacy will have some fans out there. However it did not light up our gaming spirit and caused us to play more of it after our testing session. It may be different for you.