The Hive Slot Review

The Hive is one of Betsoft Gaming’s freshest slots, offering 30 paylines, a 96.13% theoretical return, and low volatility, to cover your reels in wins with almost every spin!

Built around the busy dynamic of an actual hive and the grid itself represented as a honeycomb, the game has charm, a distinct look, and awesome rewards in store for you. As Betsoft puts it, The Hive online slot is buzzingly awesome and agog with free spins, sticky wilds, and so much more.

The bees will work their way around the honeycomb clockwise and diligently fill it with honey, as there is plenty of room for random bees to appear on the grid’s 18 spots and provide some game-altering effects for even more rewarding gameplay! Are you ready to fill up the HONEY METER for some delectable treats, too?

Theme, Storyline, and Graphics: Busy as Bees

The theme of the game will make an immediate impression on you. When you first enter the game, you will see an 18-spot honeycomb, which is your grid.

The symbols will spin through the honeycomb and produce wins, and the game has a built-in fast-play function to expedite the action – much like bees don’t like to waste time, and rush to fill each prismatic cell with delightful honey, pollen, and even more bees!

You can see a glass bottle right next to the honeycomb which is your Honey Meter that gets filled with mouth-watering honey and eventually bursts open to trigger even more precious rewards. The bees themselves are all smiling back, adorned with various petals, and the reels are populated by flowers, along with the low-paying letter symbols.

Naturally, the graphics are polished, crisp, and eye-catching, although you won’t see too many 3D animations. Still, the bees do get the Betsoft Gaming treatment. There is also the usual flash of lights when a paying line is formed.

The Hive Symbols and Payouts: Dripping with Delight

The Hive slot machine symbols are naturally super-thematic. They fit nicely into the gameplay and theme and will offer you many opportunities to score big, although you never have to overspend or bet big in the first place.

There are the bees with special abilities that will show on the honeycomb grid to offer their help, along with the spreading wilds that will pop for a quick boost! Now, you may want to find out a few details about how these bees work.

There is Queen Bee, who calls on other bees to appear around her, giving your chances of winning an immediate boost! When Drone Bees appear as part of winning combinations, they will start filling up the Honey Meter, which will burst open the bottle and trigger the Free Spins level!

These bees will fly around the honeycombed grid and travel to and fro to deliver honey to the bottle, making for eye-catching and clever thematical gameplay.

Oh, and of course there are the worker bees that are fastidiously traveling around the hive and making sure that you are in for more treats. These bees will award players a stacking multiplier, which works in a pretty simple way.

You will get a multiplier equal to the number of worker bees around the hive +1, but watch out because the multiplier will only apply to the wins that are aligned with the worker bees. Bees may appear anywhere on the reels, but they will also fly away, off to perform other tasks, after several random spins, recreating the excellent dynamic of a real hive!

Feature and symbol-rich, The Hive online slot machine has more to offer! For example, once you trigger the Free Spins, there are also the Honey Burst Spreading Wilds, which start to show around the 18-cell honeycomb grid.

Queen Bee herself may pay up to 800 coins for five of a kind, followed by the ladybug, which adds 400 coins for five of a kind. The three flower symbols will each pay you 64 for five of a kind, and players may further get a 40-coin payout for five of most of the low-paying letter symbols, and 25 for some of the rest.

Sounds and Animations: Whirs and Buzzes to Keep You Company

The atmosphere in The Hive online slot is relaxing, with the bees buzzing softly in the background and an upbeat catchy tune keeping things calm and playful. The reels spin with a soft whirring and a plonking sound when they finally click into place.

Drone bees hover all over the honeycomb looking to scoop out the syrupy liquid and pour it into the bottle leading to the special bonus level. When Queen Bee arrives, the whole honeycomb will light up with the sun shining behind it and you will have several rounds during which bees will be arriving at a greater rate.

The animations, as we have touched upon before, tend to be rather vanilla, but introduced nicely into the grid, adding to the screen in a meaningful and engaging way. The small swooshes, whirs, and buzzes of the bees are thematic as well, adding to the feeling that you are in the heart of a busy hive yourself!

The Hive Gameplay: Do Your Bit for the Hive!

The Hive online slot gameplay is built around familiar mechanics. You get to quickly adjust the size of your bet, from anything between $0.10 to $80, and place a wager. The potential payout per winning combination – 30 in total – will be impacted by how much you are betting.

One small drawback we noticed about the gameplay is that if you change the size of the bet while building the Honey Meter, the progress will be reset. It’s a bit of a let-down, this one, but we can see how it matters to the game.

Another thing we wanted to flag about the gameplay is that if you are on a limited budget, you may want to avoid betting the maximum $80. We have found out that this way the bankroll runs out a little too quickly, and in many instances, the wins may not be enough to sustain you.

As to the pace of the gameplay, The Hive slot makes the spins pacey, having them click into place in seconds. There is an autoplay feature where you can preload on how many rounds you want to bet up ahead. Players can similarly benefit from a 376x max payout.

The honeycombed grid is a 3-4-5-4-3 hexagonal layout, which is focused on adding to the authenticity of the slot.

The Hive Features: Does Hard Work Pay Off?

When it comes to the slot’s features, most of the action is built around the bees and the Free Spins level you can trigger once you have filled the bottle with honey. Here is how all of this works.

• Honey Meter: The Honey Meter is the special bonus feature that triggers the Free Spins bonus in The Hive online slot. The Honey Meter is filled by the drone bees which bring in the honey randomly, but once the bottle is filled, you get 5 free spins, which brings us to the second special feature.
• Honey Burst Spreading Wilds: Five free spins are enough for the Honey Burst Spreading Wilds to hit the reels. These symbols will then spread with every spin during the bonus round, and trigger potentially more payouts.

Final Thoughts: The Hive Calls Upon You

Building one of the most evocative themes the slot industry has seen in recent years, Betsoft Gaming’s The Hive online slot is a fantastic work of design, clever gameplay mechanics, and overall feel. It is true that the game could have been a little more generous with the features, and free spins, and perhaps have included easier-to-get multipliers and more bonus rounds.

The game puts its money on players loving the clever honeycombed grid and the way the whole slot comes together to evoke what it could be like to be a part of The Hive. For this reason alone, we would recommend giving this game a shot by playing the free demo right here on this page!