Wild Swarm

What these figures mean for Wild Swarm

Wild Swarm is the most generous game Push Gaming publishes in this catalogue, at least on paper. Its higher setting returns 97.03%, which puts it third of the fifty-eight slots on this site by studio figure, behind only Blood Suckers at 98.00% and Steam Tower at 97.04% — one hundredth of a point short of the second. Its lower setting, 94.67%, is also the best fallback figure among the six Push titles here. Push publishes both and notes that the one in force appears on the loading screen and in the user panel.

The interesting thing is what happens to the price when the setting drops. At 97.03% the house edge is 2.97%; at 94.67% it is 5.33%. The lower build does not take a little more — it takes about 1.8 times as much per spin. On twenty-pence stakes, five thousand spins amount to £1,000 of turnover: an expected cost of about £29.70 on the top build and about £53.30 on the other, a difference of £23.60. The very thing that makes this game stand out — a return better than almost anything else on the site — exists only on one of its two configurations. On the other, it is an ordinary 94.67% game. Against the studio's weakest top figure here, Big Bamboo's 96.13%, the better build of Wild Swarm is 0.90 of a point ahead, which is 90p less expected cost on every £100 staked.

The second distinctive number cuts the other way. Push's highest observed win for Wild Swarm is 3,069x, by a distance the lowest of the studio's six titles here; the others run from 17,500x to 50,000x. The volatility label is also one step softer, Mid-High rather than the High Push gives the rest. A high return paired with a lower ceiling is a recognisable shape: more of the money comes back in middling amounts and less is reserved for rare enormous outcomes. That is consistent with the label, though Push publishes no hit frequency or win distribution that would let us measure it, and the 3,069x carries no odds.

For comparison with another studio: NetEnt's ten games here cap out between 300x and 2,200x, so Wild Swarm's observed top sits above every one of them while its headline return sits among their best. In character it is closer to a classic NetEnt title than to the Push games that share its lobby row.

The design is compact. The grid is 5x4 with 20 winlines. Three or more hive symbols start a round of up to 15 free spins in which wilds stay where they land. A chest symbol opens a pick that can reveal instant prizes, extra free spins, a boost for the hive, or swarm mode straight away. Swarm mode is the feature the title is named for: bees are collected to fill the hive, and when the swarm triggers, sticky wilds keep arriving — Push calls them endless. Sticky wilds compound, because each one stays to contribute to later spins, which is why a single good free-spins round can do most of a session's work.

The cap on the round matters as much as the wilds in it. Push states up to 15 free spins, a fixed upper limit, whereas Tiki Tumble's free games are described as unlimited. A round that cannot run past fifteen spins bounds how far a single bonus can carry a session, which is consistent with the game's modest observed ceiling and its softer label. It also makes the free spins easier to plan around: the longest possible round is known before it starts.

Push lists no bonus buy for this game; of the six here, only Jammin' Jars 2 is in the same position. That makes Wild Swarm one of the simpler Push titles to reason about: what you pay per spin is what you stake, and every feature arrives through play.

The checks before playing follow from the numbers. First and most important, read the RTP on the loading screen or in the user panel. If it shows 97.03%, you are on one of the best-returning configurations of any game on this site. If it shows 94.67%, the headline advantage is gone and you are paying close to double the house edge for exactly the same game. Second, set expectations by the ceiling rather than by the theme: a best recorded result of 3,069x — £613.80 on a twenty-pence spin — means this is not a game for chasing life-changing multiples, and a session plan should reflect that. Third, note that the lower configuration still beats the floor of every other Push game listed here; if a casino runs it, the penalty is real but smaller than on its stablemates.

Put simply, Wild Swarm offers the best top setting Push publishes and the best fallback too, in exchange for the smallest observed ceiling and a slightly softer volatility label. For a player who values return over spectacle that is a good trade — provided the casino is running the 97.03% version, which takes a few seconds to confirm.

The RTP you get depends on the casino

Push Gaming publishes 2 different RTP builds of this game and each casino chooses which one to run. Most review sites print a single number; these are all the builds the studio publishes for Wild Swarm, highest first. Push Gaming names no default among them, so the figure at the top of this page is simply the highest it publishes.

On £100 of turnover the gap between the highest and lowest build here is £2.36. A casino is not obliged to tell you which build it runs, so treat any single RTP figure — including ours — as the best case until you have checked the game's own info screen in the lobby.

How Wild Swarm compares with the rest of our catalogue

Against every other game here whose studio publishes its maths.

Volatility as the studio states it — what the index measures.