Cluster Kingdom

Cluster Kingdom: Slot Overview

'They just don't make 'em like they used to', has a grain of truth to it when talking about castles. Some of these edifices of an earlier age have been kicking around for many hundreds of years, witnesses to the rising and falling of the human fortunes around them. Online slots, by comparison, have a far shorter shelf life, here one day gone the next in an endless deluge of releases. One developer that crafts slots that manage to stick around longer than many is ELK Studios, and the team has gone and made the mediaeval-themed online slot Cluster Kingdom.

Laid out on a table next to gold and silver coins displaying the king and queen on them is Cluster Kingdom's gaming matrix. It looks like some sort of card and dice game of yore has just been set up, with a solid bundle of cash on the line. For the most part, it is possible to pretend you've been transported hundreds of years into the past to partake of the local enjoyment - apart from when epic heavy metal thunders from the speakers during big win counts. This only fuels the adrenal rush rather than take anything away, as ELK Studios' sound team is accustomed to doing.

On each spin, 5 reels flip 5 cards over to reveal 25 symbols. True to its name, Cluster Kingdom makes wins when clusters of 5 or more matching symbols are adjacent to each other. Winning symbols and all non-winning symbols of the same type as the winning symbols are taken off the grid and replaced with new ones, though they do not cascade downwards. Repeat wins occur like this till no new win lands. On each spin, players are able to wager 20 c to $/€100 and can expect a theoretical return value of 94% and a medium/high volatile math model.

Five cards are Cluster Kingdom's pay symbols, depicting wheat, trees, windmills, houses, and castles. A 5 OAK cluster pays 0.1 to 1 times the bet, whereas a 20+ cluster win awards 25 to 250 times the bet. A win of only wild symbols pays as the highest value pay symbol.

Cluster Kingdom: Slot Features

As well as cluster wins, Cluster Kingdom has sticky redrops, wilds, multiplier wilds, 3 feature symbols, a mini bonus, a regular bonus, a super bonus, and bonus buys.

Sticky Redrops

When landed, the sticky redrop symbol picks one pay symbol. All matching pay symbols on the reels become sticky while others redrop. Landing one or more new matching symbols awards a further redrop, and payouts occur when no additional matching symbols appear. Wilds and wild multipliers are persistent in sticky redrops. Feature symbols are inactive till the end of the sticky redrops.

Wild Symbols

Wild and multiplier wilds substitute for any regular pay symbol. Multiplier wilds apply their value to winning combinations they are part of and are sticky till the end of the game round. Multiplier wilds next to each other multiply their values and add the sum to one of the multiplier wild symbols. The other multiplier symbol is downgraded to a wild.

Feature Symbols

The three feature symbols, Princess, King, and Queen, trigger their feature when they are on the reels.

• The Princess feature places 1 to 4 wild symbols on the grid. When the King symbol is visible, the Princess symbol moves one step towards it after each win and before a refill.
• The King feature picks the lowest pay symbol type next to the king and upgrades these symbols to the highest adjacent symbol.
• The Queen symbol rearranges vertically and horizontally adjacent symbols. When the King is visible, the Queen moves one step towards the King after each win and before refills.

Bonus Games

• Bonus Game - When the King and Queen are adjacently connected to each other, vertically or horizontally, 6 free spins are awarded. Multipliers carry over to the bonus round and are persistent between free spins. The bonus game starts with a new set of symbols.
• Special Bonus Game - Triggering the super bonus games needs the Queen, Princess, and King to be vertically or horizontally adjacent to each other. In the super bonus game, players get 6 free spins with increasing persistent multiplier wild symbols.
• Mini Bonus Game - When the Princess and the King are adjacent to each other, players are awarded the mini-bonus game. In this feature, players get 3 free spins and increasing persistent multiplier wild symbols.

In the super bonus and the mini bonus game, the increasing multiplier wild symbols increase the multiplier by +1 when they are part of one or more winning combos. Bonus games can be retriggered.

X-iter

Cluster Kingdom's X-iter section has these buys to choose from: Bonus Hunt - buy a game round with more than triple the chance of getting the bonus game for 3x the bet, Sticky Redrops - buy a spin with sticky redrops for 10x the bet, Mini Bonus - 50x the bet, Bonus Game - 100x the bet and Super Bonus Game - 500x the bet.

Cluster Kingdom: Slot Verdict

ELK Studios sure does know a thing or two about making a game that stands out from the pack, and Cluster Kingdom is one such example. It doesn't stand completely on its own, like a king perched at the very pinnacle of his society. Memories of Print Studios' slot Tarasque popped up all over the Cluster Kingdom review, as did Holy Hand Grenade to a lesser extent. It was all the excellent little mediaeval details that did it, the Monty Python-esque touch, and a feeling that you're playing a very clever game indeed. Tarasque wins the prize for being the more innovative, more intricately designed release, but there are many positives to be found in Cluster Kingdom, too.

Not just thematic positives either because the gameplay is up there as well. Naturally, the higher on the hierarchy the feature, the better. However, lower down the pecking order isn't bad either as multiplier wilds and sticky redrops add spice to the base game. It did seem at times that, as a cluster pays slot, it would have been handy if symbols on the reels dropped before a refill, but the system here as it is provides many opportunities to link repeat wins together. Might be frustrating, no doubt there, but Cluster Kingdom offers several ivy-lined pathways for knocking together exciting results - up to a cap of 10,000x the bet.

Cluster Kingdom was a class act from start to finish. ELK Studios has nailed a sweet mediaeval atmosphere throughout, thickened it with blasts of heavy metal at just the right moments, and assembled a set of top features to lay out a gripping tale of kings and queens when the going's good.