For years now, Huff ‘N Puff is a game that seems to have captured the attention of a subset of slot players. Rarely do I see people asking about games as often as I do this one.
So it’s no surprise it got the slot sequel treatment. Initially I thought from a quick glance at G2E it was a subtle brand extension, akin to many Light and Wonder games coming out lately like 5 Treasures Golden Door, which adds some volatility to the bonus but seems to leave the base game intact.
The bet panel seemingly reinforced this, with the same bet increments at the penny level as its predecessor: 75 credits for an all ways pays game. However, look closer and the game is reworked a lot more than that.
The real indicator is the massive change in base game line pays. Here’s the original Huff ‘N Puff pays:
By comparison, here’s Huff ‘N More Puff:
The reductions are massive compared to the original. They mention a symbol replacement feature, which could yield more symbols, but when it’s offset by these reductions and even the poker symbols are affected that doesn’t look good.
Furthermore, there’s the addition of two more poker symbols, making line hits more difficult by the nature of having more symbols to attempt to match, and they pay even more meagerly. More mundane, by comparison, was the swap out of traffic cones with measuring tape; there’s the same number of semi-premium symbols.
But overall this seems to really de-emphasize the base game pays, and it seems that’s to offset the bonuses.
You can still trigger the bonus with six hats, and that bonus works nearly identically to before. The one change is if you have a hat land where a mansion house border already exists, it will upgrade another space on the reels (the best one it can upgrade) instead of giving you a 10x your wager prize payout, unless all 15 spaces have mansion borders, in which it then reverts to the 10x your wager prize.
However, there’s also the addition of buzz saw symbols, which when you get three of those yields a wheel spin.
The wheel has a variety of options, including:
- Mini, Minor, Major and Grand jackpots, with some of the jackpots featuring multipliers
- Mega Hat Feature: Bigger hats spin through until the reels stop, and whatever spaces have hats is what you start with in terms of straw house borders before your standard six free spins. From the looks of things the worst you can do on the Mega Hat feature is start with four straw house spaces, which would be a downgrade from the standard six. Not surprisingly, this feature seems to come out more often than the other new choices.
- Buzz Saw Feature: Each buzz saw starts from the space it landed for the bonus trigger and adds a border to each space from it starting point to the right until it rolls off the screen. If a previous buzz saw already established borders, the next buzzsaw upgrades them, so you can start with spaces upgraded to stick or mansion house borders. Then you get your normal six free spins.
- Mansions Feature: All the hats you land will automatically yield mansion borders, and the spaces the buzzsaws land give you mansion house borders to get started. Like the others, you get six free spins to build up your mansion opportunities.
For all the various free spins, landing three or more hats on a single spin yields an additional free game.
There’s another payout change when it comes to the houses. The credit prize range has been narrowed (and lowered) on the stick and straw houses, while widened (and raised) on the mansions. A 2x Mini prize is also available for the stick houses and mansions. This is likely due to that addition of a mansion feature and the ability for more houses to be placed on the board, but it serves to make the bonuses more volatile too.
My scan of a lot of bonuses on the game since it was released seems to put 50x around the general bonus value, although it can go heavily in either direction when you factor in weaker Mega Hat Feature bonuses on the low end and massive Mansion Feature bonuses in the other. But it seems like there’s an awful lot of 50x bonus outcomes on YouTube.
So overall, this looks to shift money to more frequent bonuses, which is frankly the draw of the game. If you hit a drought without bonuses, which wasn’t unusual on the original game but theoretically should be less often here, it’s even more punishing thanks to the heavily lowered base game values. But the bonuses have some additional potential, thanks to options like the Mansions Feature.
Huff ‘N More Puff Slot Videos
Here is RandomSlots and his look at the game and a wheel bonus with a Buzz Saw Feature, along with pictures of the pay tables:
TheBigPayback had a handpay on the game while progressive betting on dime denomination:
NewEnglander82 got all of the mansions and won a Major progressive in the process:
