Donny Dough Demo: Free Play and Review

Four kinds of Donny head, and no Wild among them

Multi-Dough symbols come in four versions. Adding ones carry 1x to 10x, Revealing Adding ones 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, 100x, 250x or 500x, Multiplying ones x2 to x5 and Revealing Multiplying ones x6 to x10, x15, x20 or x25. The Revealing kinds land showing a question mark and then turn over their value.

Nor is there a Wild among the ordinary symbols. Suits pay 0.2x to 2.5x the bet for three, four or five, the coin stack and the banknotes 0.5x to 5x, the coin purse and the safe 1x to 7.5x and the pink gems 2x to 10x.

Only 23 of our 498 base spins paid a LootLine, although 495 of them had at least one Multi-Dough symbol on the grid.

Why +1, x2, +1 makes 3x and not 4x

Values are read left to right, so the same three faces pay differently in a different order. Spin 230 had +1, x2 and +1 on a line: 1, doubled to 2, plus 1 for 3x, or €6.00. Spin 133 had +1, x2 and x2, which doubles twice to 4x. On spin 116 the x2 stood on reel 1, so it counted as an Adding 2 and the line read 2, 3, 4.

One face can serve two LootLines in the same spin. Spin 214, the top base spin of the log, had a +6 on reel 1 and a +3 on reel 2 sitting on two lines at once. One line went on to a +1 for 10x, €20.00; the other to a Revealing +15 for 24x, €48.00. With a €4.00 symbol line the spin paid 36x.

Each of the 29 base-game LootLines began on reel 1. Of those, 4 got as far as reel 4, and none reached reel 5 outside the bonus.

Sticky heads for ten spins, or bulbs and a Hat

Sticky Dough starts on three FS symbols with 10 free spins. Every Multi-Dough symbol that lands sticks until it is part of a winning LootLine, and the ones that won are cleared on the following spin, so a high Multiplying value can wait several spins for the rest of its line.

Our clip shows a round bought for €180.00. Its first nine free spins brought €2.80 while faces piled up, and the 20x on reel 1 never found a line. On the tenth a 4x on reel 1, a 1x on reel 2, an x6 on reel 3 and an x2 on reel 4 lined up: 4 + 1 = 5, times 6 is 30, times 2 is 60x, or €120.00.

The purchase returned 61.4x the bet against its 90x price, and the unpaid 20x was still on the grid when TOTAL WIN appeared.

Strike Gold needs four FS symbols and also gives 10 free spins. Each Multi-Dough symbol in a winning LootLine lights a bulb above its reel, one bulb per symbol. GAME INFO allows at most four lit bulbs at once and pictures a bar of four, without saying if that limit is per reel or for the whole grid; casino listings read it as per reel. When Donny's Hat lands while any bulb is lit, the grid respins and each reel gets as many new Multi-Dough symbols as it has lit bulbs. A Hat is guaranteed on the final free spin. Both bonuses gain 2 spins from two more FS symbols and 4 from three.

29 base LootLines, then an x10 that waited nine spins

Nothing was bought during the 500 logged spins at €2.00. Across the 498 base-game spins, LootLines paid €362.00 and ordinary symbol lines €247.80, €609.80 in all.

Both of the log's natural bonuses were Sticky Dough. Spin 78 paid 99x, most of it on the second free spin, when +3, +4, x4 and x2 lined up along the top row: 7, then 28, then 56x, €112.00. Free spin 8 used a single x3 in two LootLines at once, a five-symbol line worth 22x and a three-symbol one worth 7x.

The second, on spin 487, ran slowly. Its first free spin left an x10 on reel 1 in the bottom row, the second an x3 beside it, and the pair stayed there, unpaid, until the tenth. Then a +2 on reel 3 joined a +1 already waiting on reel 4: 10, times 3 for 30, plus 2 and 1 for 33x, €66.00. Six other faces were still stuck on reels 1 and 5 when the round ended, and they paid nothing. The session closed at €4,874.20, a return of 87.4%.

The price of a guaranteed five heads

Two cards bill every spin for as long as they stay on, BonusHunt FeatureSpins and Ka-ching FeatureSpins. The first, at 3x, multiplies the bonus odds by five; the second, at 50x, puts at least five Multi-Dough symbols on each spin. Five faces are not five on one line, though, and in our base log the faces were already there on 495 spins out of 498.

For the bonuses the menu asks 90x (Sticky Dough) and 200x (Strike Gold), and the labels alternate: High, Medium, High, Medium from left to right. The demo reports 96.26%. Casino listings give 96.23% for the same top version, followed by 94.36%, 92.34% and 88.31%, while Hacksaw publishes no RTP on the game's page. Which version a casino runs is its own choice, and some countries keep the menu closed.

LootLines after Donny: Marlin Masters and Reign of Rome

Reign of Rome took the idea furthest. Its Tribute symbols use the same four value lists, from 1x to 500x and x2 to x25, the studio's page for it repeats the same x3, 4x, 1x, x2 example worth 16x, and the grid grows to 5x5 with 19 paylines and a 15,000x cap.

Marlin Masters keeps this game's 5x4 grid and 14 paylines, but its Marlins only add, from 1x to 1,000x, and a Fisherman can collect them off the line as well.

Donny Dough pays most of its money through values that sit on faces, so the paytable matters less than where the faces land. In our session 29 LootLines out-earned every symbol line combined, and each Sticky Dough we saw, natural or bought, was settled by a handful of lines that ran far enough from reel 1.