Hong Kong Tower Slot – Free Demo

A tower with 99 lines

Learning about this Elk Studios slot, I leapt straight into the gameplay like kids on Christmas, bypassing both the splash screen and info document. The session that followed ran to 370 spins at a stake of 40.00. Seconds later a mystery symbol arrives and turns into something else on the reels, and a tremble races down the spine. It can only turn into a symbol already on screen, so whatever surrounds it decides what it becomes. The few hundred or so brain cells remaining in my skull begin a frantic exchange of handshakes. Of those 370 spins, 86 returned anything at all. Finally, the writing is on the wall: the game I've been anticipating keeps its whole bonus outside the reels. Wheels of the Sky is a wheel round rather than a spin award, and it pays out only once it ends. But is it worth the delay or not? It took until spin 97 for the round to arrive for the first time. Let's see.

Hong Kong Tower is a 5-reel, 3-row slot. Only the highest win on each active line is paid. It has 99 linking win lines that pay from left to right, and it is playable from 0.20 a spin across all devices. I played at 40.00 a spin, some way above that floor. Now here comes the intriguing part. Across the session those spins staked 14,800.00 and returned 119,804.00. It launched in April 2017 and it operates at a 96.30% RTP. Elk Studios' Poltava and Birthday! sit alongside it on this site as line-paying releases of the same era. The volatility rests at the top end of the scale, which of course is a strong indicator pointing to the fact that the money is stashed in the feature. Away from it, my best single spin paid 15.0x the stake, on spin 353.

The mystery symbol reveals into what is already there

The game contains mystery symbols in the main game, and when a mystery symbol lands on the reels, it reveals into another symbol already on screen after the reels stop. The 7 is the top line symbol, ahead of the diamond, the lotus and the bonsai, with fire, metal, water, wood and earth beneath them. Mystery symbols that cannot produce a win do not reveal at all. One that reveals into a bonus symbol overrides any other bonus symbols on screen. You've witnessed this before, haven't you?

Climbing the Wheels of the Sky

The bonus, ladies and gentlemen. The bonus symbol is a scatter and it appears on all five reels. This is where the magic (hopefully) occurs, and to be granted entry one must land 3 bonus scatter symbols anywhere on the reels, which will trigger Wheels of the Sky. Bets cannot be changed once the round is running. 4 scatters carry one extra life along, and 5 scatters carry two. Extra lives are the only way the round continues once an empty section lands. A mystery symbol revealing into a bonus symbol counts as 5 and activates the feature with two extra lives. That is the shortest route to two lives, since it does not need five scatters to land on their own.

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What is on offer is three wheels of cash prizes, and players ascend the wheels as follows:

• Level-up arrow - land the arrow segment and you move up to the next wheel. The cash prizes are larger.
• Empty segment - the round concludes, unless you have an extra life remaining. In that case the wheel respins.
• Extra lives - for as long as they go unused, they persist across the wheels. The round pays out at the finish.

Minty’s Closing Thought: Two wheel rounds across 370 spins produced 114,016.00 of the 119,804.00 won here, and 113,800.00 of that came from the one on spin 97.

One spin did nearly all of it

I'm dismayed with the fact that it turned out to be so rare, as much as I adore a quick bonus. My longest stretch without a win ran 20 spins and ended on spin 228. Over 370 spins I observed Wheels of the Sky twice, once on spin 97 and then not again until spin 192. Ninety-five spins separated the two. The two rounds paid 114,016.00 between them, or 95% of everything I won. The split was lopsided: 113,800.00 from the first and 216.00 from the second.

This is a slot with a maths model that shoves nearly everything into the feature, and a max win potential of 3,016x the stake. My first round alone came in at 2,845x the stake and ended the session at a 809.5% return. The balance finished at 110,004.00 from a 5,000.00 start, with the peak of 117,288.00 coming on spin 97 itself. But the low point of 3,312.00 on a 5,000.00 balance is the other half of that tale.