Crystal Catcher (Push Gaming) Slot Demo & Review

You’ll find crystals popping up all over the place in popular culture, and that includes movies and television, as well as games and online slots! There were a couple of great Stargate episodes that featured strange crystals in one way or another, and the art style used in Crystal Catcher is a dead ringer for the alien-inspired magical crystals you have likely seen dozens of times before. Of course, Push Gaming is not the first developer to make a slot in this style – Print Studio’s Crystal Golem immediately springs to mind, along with Pragmatic Play’s Crystal Cavern Megaways. It’s worth noting that both of those games offered larger maximum jackpots than Crystal Catcher, but that isn’t always the most important variable when deciding which Jewel and Gem online slot you want to spin.

The largest prizes available in Crystal Catcher are awarded for hitting a cluster of 16 or more adjacent matching symbols. There are two groups of stones on the paytable; in the more valuable group, the Large Red stone will pay 100x the total bet for a 16+ symbol cluster, whilst the Yellow and Purple Stones will award 50x and 25x, respectively. As for the lower-paying group, there are Smaller Green, Blue, and Purple Stones, all of which share equal returns of 12.5x the total stake for 16 or more symbols. The instant prize symbols can be much more valuable than any of the regular crystals – those can pay as much as 500x the total bet for a single symbol, but you’ll need a wild beetle symbol to land during the same spin to actually collect the values shown.

A reasonably wide betting range is available in Crystal Catcher – the minimum wager is just €0.10, whilst the maximum is a full 1000 times higher at €100.00 per spin. As with many modern slots, the only problem here is the huge jumps between the larger bets – things were definitely better when you were permitted to choose any amount you liked between the minimum/maximum limits.

Crystal Catcher utilises a 7×7 playfield for a total of 49 unique symbol positions. This is especially important with a grid slot such as this, as it means you can potentially hit up to three maximum 16 symbol clusters just from the initial symbol drop! Furthermore, like most other grid slots, any winning combinations that land on the reels will be instantly removed, allowing new symbols – and, therefore, potentially further wins – to drop in to fill the resulting empty positions.

Wild Symbols

There are two sets of wild symbols on the reels of Crystal Catcher, but the paytable isn’t entirely clear about the exact differences between each variety. However, you can at least tell the difference between both varieties easily enough – the regular wild beetles are a blue colour, whilst the golden variety is, well, gold.

Every wild beetle technically has a multiplier associated with it, which starts at 1x when the symbol first lands on the playfield. The multiplier only increases when the Crystal Catcher feature is activated, making them irrelevant on any spin that does not include a crystal symbol as well.

Crystal Catcher

The Crystal Catcher feature will be activated whenever a wild beetle lands simultaneously as a crystal symbol. In this mode, the multiplier of each wild beetle will increase by 1x each time a crystal, bonus crystal, or instant prize lands on the reels.

This is the only part of the rules where the wild gold beetle is mentioned specifically. Whenever these symbols are left behind, the multipliers attached to any regular wild beetles removed as part of other winning combinations will be transferred to the remaining wild gold beetle symbols.

Ante Bet

Enabling the ante bet option will increase the cost of each spin by 20%, but in return, you will receive much higher odds of landing wild beetle symbols and triggering the free games feature.

Push even provides a definitive probability of hitting the top jackpot – 1 in 2,127,660 for standard bets or 1 in 1,510,574 when playing with the ante bet option enabled. With this in mind, I’d recommend enabling this option whenever your bankroll permits.

Triggering the free games feature is a little more involved in Crystal Catcher than in most other online slots. Rather than simply hitting three scatter symbols, you’ll need to land a bonus crystal symbol simultaneously as one or more wild beetles. When this occurs, the beetle will collect the bonus crystal, and the Crystal Catcher base game feature will play out before the free spins feature begins.

Free Games

Like most other online slots, the free spins are where the real big wins can be found in Crystal Catcher! In this mode, the multiplier attached to every wild beetle symbol will still increase by 1x whenever a crystal or instant prize symbol lands on the reels but is also boosted whenever a winning combination is removed from the playfield.

Bonus Buy

The bonus buy menu has two options – the normal bonus round can be purchased for 75x the current stake per spin, resulting in an RTP increase of 94.50%.

Alternatively, a ‘super bonus buy’ option is available at the cost of 275x the current price per spin. Unfortunately, this mode cannot be reached via regular play, which is sure to be disappointing for those prohibited from using bonus buy options within their country or jurisdiction.