King of Cats Slot – Free Demo

Picking a cat before the first spin

Big Time Gaming's universe has broadened in King of Cats, which launched on 19 May 2021. I sat with it for 290 spins at 1.00 a spin, all of them on one side of that toggle. It arrives with a PlayerSelect toggle. You switch sides with the Lion or Puma play button, and the rules let you do it at any point. That toggle lets you choose the Lion Game, where the large block wilds land, and the Puma Game, where full-reel wilds do the work instead. Only one set is live at a time, so the wilds of the other half are simply absent from the reels. The game is played using a Megaways grid of 6 reels carrying up to 7 symbols each for up to 117,649 ways to win.

There are, of course, fresh settings to discover here, while the imagery is comparable as in the other Megaways games, and symbols on the reels comprise 9 to A card ranks as well as the more generous Green, Blue and Red Gems. The Red Gem leads that trio at 4.0x the stake for six, with the Blue and Green Gems on 1.5x and 1.0x for the same count. The Purple Gem is the most valuable. Five of them pay 5.0x the stake and four pay 3.0x. It hands you 25 times your stake for a six of a kind combination, and it's the only symbol that pays from two.

Lion Wilds on reels 2 to 5

There are two features bundled in King of Cats. Both run on the same Megaways engine Big Time Gaming uses in Monopoly Megaways and Lil' Devil. Which one you receive is up to you, and in the Lion Game, 2x2, 3x3 and 4x4 Lion Wilds drop on reels 2 to 5, bearing x4, x9 or x16 by size. My best base-game spin of the sitting was a 3x3 Lion Wild at x9 sitting across four Purple Gems, worth 22.0x the stake. In the Puma Game, up to 3 full-reel Puma Wilds land on the same reels instead. The Scatter is the exception to that reel restriction and can turn up anywhere across the six. Each reveals x2, x3 or x4, and either way the wilds stand in for everything except the Scatter.

What 3 Scatters bought me, twice

Matters heat up when you land 3, 4, 5 or 6 Scatters. Three was all I ever managed, twice in 290 spins. They will award you access to the Free Spins of whichever game you're playing, and the Lion round grants 8, 12, 16 or 20 spins. Whatever stake triggered the round is the stake it plays at for the whole of it. The 2x2, 3x3 and 4x4 Lion Wilds begin at x2, x5 and x8. Those opening values sit below the x4, x9 and x16 the same wilds carry in the base game. Every time any Lion Wild lands those multipliers rise by 2, 5 and 8 before wins are paid, and a retrigger on 3, 4, 5 or 6 Scatters contributes another 4, 8, 12 or 16 spins.

The Puma round is the longer of the two. A Puma retrigger adds 6, 9, 12 or 15 spins on 3, 4, 5 or 6 Scatters. It begins with 15, 18, 21 or 24 spins, and the first Puma Wild on a reel reveals x2, x4 or x6. Those reveals are a step above the x2, x3 and x4 the same wilds carry outside the feature. Each subsequent Puma Wild on that same reel lifts the three multipliers by 1, 2 and 3 after wins are paid. The Puma Game's stated return is 96.70%, a shade under the figure quoted for the Lion Game. Wins using Puma Wilds are multiplied by them. I stayed on the Lion side for the whole sitting and never put the Puma half to the test. Several substituting wilds have their multipliers multiplied together, and multipliers reset when either feature concludes.

290 spins and a balance that never went back up

King of Cats is the more volatile of its two halves when you perch on the Lion side. It paid on 58 spins out of 290, and 24 of those 58 came back under the stake. That is where I spent my 290 spins, and the base game is just a filler to liven things up a bit, as typically is the situation with these slots. The low point was 831.90, and the longest run without any win at all was 19 spins, ending on spin 213. In truth, it's all about the free spins game. A completed Lion round pays out what it has accumulated and resets its Wild multipliers, having run throughout on the stake that triggered it. For me it was the only thing keeping the session breathing. The better of the two landed on spin 281 and made that spin worth 62.0x the stake. Two Lion rounds, both from 3 Scatters and 8 spins, paid 73.00 credits between them, 42% of everything I won. Across the sitting that came to 174.90 won against 290.00 wagered, a session return of 60.3%. The balance still never rose back above the 1,000.00 credits it began with.

The Minty Take: Lion-side, two 8-spin rounds carried 42% of everything I won and the remaining 288 spins handled the card ranks at a loss. I closed at 884.90 credits from 1,000.00, a 60.3% return over 290 spins against a stated 96.72% — a short sitting, and one that spent most of itself waiting on a third Scatter.