Micro Knights Slot – Free Demo

Reel drops, not spins

The terms 'highly volatile' and 'huge potential' don't instantly leap to mind when you think of ELK Studios. Pirots 4 and Bompers are two more of the studio's titles. Handsome games sure. I played this one at 6.00 a drop. But quite frequently the math model and gameplay leave a little to be desired, for tougher-edged gamblers at least, and the studio tries to alter that impression in their slot Micro Knights, which happens to hold a little of both.

Micro Knights still manages to be a handsome game, and the 7x7, cluster pays grid is staffed by three knights who roam about on it. That makes 49 symbols on every drop. ELK doesn't even call a spin a spin here. It's a reel drop.

It paid on 111 of my 490 drops, a hit rate of 23%, of which 54 paid less than the stake. The longest run without a win was 16 drops, and it ended on drop 444.

As to symbols, landing in any spot is the golden chalice wild. It can substitute for anything except the bonus symbol. There are no paylines involved anywhere. Clusters of 5 or more identical symbols touching each other pay. One of my better drops, number 413, rebuilt a cluster out of the queue after the first cascade and paid 16.0x the stake. The winners are cleared and fresh symbols tumble into the gaps, so one drop can pay multiple times.

Six flags off the Counting Knight's meter

Filling the Counting Knight's meter is the name of the game. That knight is the one who tracks how big each winning cluster is and hands out the flag features. Doing so can guide you to a pile of plunder, and there are two spots to do so - in the base game and in free drops.

Every winning cluster fills the meter. Wins of any size count towards it. Larger clusters fill it more. A full meter grants one of six features. On drop 285 a fill turned into Extra Wilds and paid 20.0x the stake. Inferno strips all low-value symbols from the grid, Extra Wilds sets 3 to 15 wilds at random, and Super Size drops a large symbol of 2x2, 3x3 or 4x4. Charge shoves 2 to 5 rows down into the Symbol Queue, Epic Charge empties the entire grid into it, and Boosted Queue lets the whole queue be used at once rather than in order. A Charge on drop 121 tipped rows into the queue and was worth 16.0x the stake. The queue itself is a reserve kept below the grid, used to build new clusters or to enlarge current ones into larger ones.

The other two knights operate on their own. The Charging Knight dashes across the grid at random and shoves a row down into the queue. The row he hits leaves the grid altogether. The Smashing Knight slams his mace, the screen shakes, and every symbol group in the queue grows by one.

Luckily this is where the next feature comes in, and the crown is the bonus symbol. When 3 are in sight on one drop, the free drops feature is activated. I saw that happen three times, with gaps of 179 and then 205 drops in between.

This feature begins with 5 free drops on the clock, and the win meter and the queue are sticky throughout, so they do not reset between drops. Features therefore keep piling up across the whole round. None of the three I hit retriggered. The first came on drop 44 and the last on drop 428. They paid 48.0x, 7.4x and 10.0x the stake.

Final Minty Score: Three free drops rounds across 490 drops returned 392.40 between them, 22% of everything the session won, and the balance still finished on 3,867.50 from 5,000.00.

The meter did all the paying

ELK Studios has certainly turned a corner, or trying to at least? There have been failures, sure. However, it kind of seems like a shift is stirring at the studio, and I'm still to see the breakout hit that blows ELK Studios' detractors away. But is it only a matter of time?

Micro Knights might not be the breakout. But it still has some tempting parts, and the powerful medieval theme comes at you via the three knights rattling about the grid while you chase the big win, and that's fine too because chasing is Micro Knights' one and only gimmick.

Respectable wins are possible via plain clusters. My biggest win outside the bonus was 20.0x the stake. Yet Micro Knights is all about filling that meter - nothing else counts, and my own 490 drops stated as much. They wagered 2,940.00 and gave back 1,807.50. A 48.0x free drops hit on drop 44 was the high point of the entire run. The balance peaked at 5,072.00 immediately after it. The bonus delivered 22% of everything I won while the balance still slipped from 5,000.00 to 3,867.50, a return of 61.5%. One captured frame shows a 6.00 stake, a balance of 5,035.70 and a drop paying 56.70.

So Micro Knights likely won't be the game that makes ELK Studios a household name. It's not poor either.