Hula Balua

Review Hula Balua

The Hula Balua pokie game comes with all everything one might imagine when thinking of the island of Hawaii. This means there is lots of greenery waiting for you, as well as a wide range of the most tropical fruits, and a waterfall that makes it the perfect destination. During our travels we love to meet local people as well, but this pokie sticks to traditional Hawaiian rather, also filling in the role of the bonus game. The Hawaiian game theme isn’t new in the online casino industry and there are few settings as relaxing as Hawaii. After giving Hula Balua a few spins we definitely felt part of a truly relaxing game environment.

The Hula Balua online pokie game doesn’t take you to the beaches, but the jungle of Hawaii is just as nice, which is something Elmo the Sloth will probably confirm. The sloth lives in a cute tree cabin which can be found right next to the waterfall pond. If you’re lucky, Elmo himself will show up randomly to give you many different wilds, providing you a perfect start to get to the biggest wins.

How to Play

Hula Balua has already been added to a lot of lobbies of the best online casinos in NZ, so you shouldn’t have any difficulties finding this popular pokie. The game itself is fairly easy to understand which should make it possible to dive right into the action. The action takes place on a 6×6 grid, with the following steps describing how to play Hula Balua:

• Despite its great visuals, the grid and the rest of Hula Balua’s design is rather minimalistic. The good thing about this is that you’ll enjoy an easy gaming process.
• Start making a bet by setting a decent bet ranging from $0.20 up to $100. Go for the Spin button and see how the reels turn for a single round. You can also make use of the Autoplay feature. Our advice is to do this moderately and limit the number of auto-spins.
• We also recommend our followers to set limits such as betting limits, win and loss limits. This can be done in the account of the online casino.
• The game makes use of scatter pays system across its 6 columns and 6 rows grid. The goal is to scatter 8 or more matching symbols anywhere on the grid at the same time to make yourself a winning combo.
• The last option in Hula Balua is the Menu icon. This button gives the player access to the game’s paytable, settings, and the rules.

Symbol Wins

This ELK Studios pokie game comes with a rainforest game theme which you’ll immediately hear and see when you drop the game on your screen. The reels of the game are set deep in the rainforest, with a waterfall in the backdrop and a little hut to the left of the reels. The graphics are neat and the different colours will make sure you’ll enjoy the game to the fullest. The audio is uptempo whilst it still includes traditional tribal sounds. We very much enjoyed hearing the birds which will make you feel at ease whilst you make your spins. Interestingly, triggering the bonus game will make the setting change from day to night giving some house beats. The pay symbols are delivered by different fruits. Out of these, the star fruit symbol is the most rewarding, paying from 1 to 200x the stake for combos of 8 to 20+. The wild in Hula Balua is a big red W, which Elmo creates as he walks on the grid in the Elmo Redrops feature. The wild will also substitute for all paying symbols. The scatter in this free online casino game is a tribal mask, and 3 or more of these symbols on the play will trigger the Bonus Game feature. Below, we dive into the different bonus features in Hula Balua.

Bonus Features

Hula Balua comes with a great total of 5 different bonus features. This includes different Redrops and wild drops to multipliers, big Symbols and bonus games, there’s a lot to experience in this game. You’ll even have a X-iter feature, which are common amongst all new generation pokies by ELK Studios. The availability of this feature may depend on your region, but as most casinos in NZ are operated in Europe, this shouldn’t be a problem. Online casinos with a licence from the UK will not work this feature though. Next, we will explain how the features of the game work, beginning with multipliers and big symbols.

Merging Symbols

Matching icons that form a rectangle or square will merge to create colossal symbols. Big symbols will have Hula Balua bonus multipliers corresponding to the number of small icons they cover. If a big icon is part of a winning combination the multiplier will be added to the global multiplier that applies to all wins. All winning symbols are removed from the reels in an avalanche and the grid receives a new set of icons. In this case, colossal icons can turn into bigger symbols if they happen to land adjacent to their matches, completing even bigger rectangles and squares.

Sticky Redrops

When the Sticky Redrops feature gets activated it will select a random paying icon, making all its instances on-screen to become sticky. Landing 1+ matching sticky symbol or wild during a redrop will give you an additional redrop. Also, a new sticky redrop symbol will upgrade the selected paying icons to the nearest best paying symbol.

Elmo Redrops

Elmo himself triggers the Elmo Redrops feature, which means he’ll be walking one column to the left, which also means they’ll be leaving a trail of random wilds per redrop. Wild symbols will remain in game until Elmo leaves the column found on the mostleft side or if they are part of a payout.

Hula Balua Free Play

Three or more bonus symbols can land anywhere on the grid with the good thing being that this can happen during the base game. If this happens, it will trigger 6, 8, 10, or 12 free drops. If 2 Bonus icons are vertically connected, they will both become Super Bonus icons. Also, during the bonus, 2 or more bonus symbols will activate 4 to 12 bonus drops.

X-iter Feature

The X-iter Feature will allow players to buy their way into different game modes, including the Hula Balua free spins (drops). The prices for the X-iter Feature range between 3x to 500x the stake. Here is how this works:

• Bonus Hunt: 2x the bet.
  • 1 spin with an increased chance of triggering free drops.
• Big Symbol: 10x the bet.
  • 1 spin that guarantees a big symbol.
• Sticky Redrops: 25x the bet.
  • Buy a spin with sticky redrops.
• Bonus Feature: 100x the bet.
  • Buy a spin that activates the bonus feature.
• Super Bonus Feature: 500x the bet.
  • Gives access to the Super Bonus game, with guaranteed big symbols on each free drop.

Payout Metrics

The Hula Balua RTP is set at 94%, which is on the low side in comparison with other online pokies. Players familiar with the games of ELK Studios will probably not be surprised though as the same percentage is seen in many other games by ELK Studios. Whilst other games can come with multiple RTP, Hula Balua is a game that only has one RTP version. The overall hit rate is labelled 27%, which means that just over a quarter of all spins on average will result in a winner. In terms of volatility, it’s in the medium to high range. The top win of Hula Balua is set at 25,000x the bet, which we consider excellent. The max win is best achieved in the Free Drops feature where you can get a lot of retriggers if luck is on your side. On average, this happens 1 in 48,154,781 spins.

Summary

The Hawaiian setting and the colourful fruit symbols, will make sure that everyone will enjoy the place they’re heading to as you can’t really go wrong with a trip to Hawaii. Still, we only wish ELK Studios would deliver games with higher RTP than 94%. For some players this might be a reason not to go for this game and look elsewhere. Looking at the rest that the online pokie game has to offer however, Hula Balua is packed with different features that are worth taking a closer look at. The graphics are outstanding and come with great sound effects as well, with the clever big symbol multiplier system leading to potentially high payouts in all phases of the game, including the bonus game. We found the Sticky Redrops feature to be very entertaining and lucrative. The 25,000x top win potential is very likely if you realise that the global win multiplier do no reset. For this reason, we’re sure regular fans of ELK Studios will definitely appreciate the game.