Micro Knights

This game is no longer available at Monkey Casino. Sorry about that! We have loads more brilliant slots from ELK Studios – why not have a spin on Pirots 3 or Thoro slot instead? 

 

Creative and slightly barmy, very small medieval fellas are the theme of the Micro Knights slot from ELK Studios. Well, it beats another trip to the Pyramids, doesn’t it?

Let’s play.

The Basics

If you fancy something new, then you’ve come to the right place, because Micro Knights from ELK Studios is unlike any slot  you’ve played before.

It comes with Cluster Pays, a 7×7 grid, cascading reels and 6 bonus features that will burn up rows, add wilds, upgrade symbols and place super-sized icons on to the reels. There are quite a few of these cluster pay games about – the Treasure Heroes slot is another example but that’s played out on a 5×5 grid.

So will these knights be turning our bank balance from micro to macro? Let’s hope so!

The Graphics

Cartoon-style animations are the order of the day here. Behind the reel grid are some rolling green hills, the odd village and rather fluffy -looking forests which flank your square reels. There’s also a cute purple dragon sitting on the castle – but more on this fire-breathing guy later.

Last of all are your comedy knights; Sir Smash, Sir Charge, and Sir Count – these bearded gentlemen will create all manner of havoc for you on the reels and have been intricately illustrated. I particularly like Sir Count’s quill (that’s not a euphemism by the way)!

A truly excellent design.

Screenshot

Micro Knights Slot Game Play

Micro Knights slot has a 7×7 grid. Bets start at 10p and go up to £100 per game.

As a cluster pay slot your wins are made by matching symbols in groups of 5. So, there are no pay-lines here, it’s a bit like our Golden Ticket slot game from Play ‘n GO which has a similar mechanic (less rows though).

The Monopoly Megaways slot has up to 7 rows, that´s the only game I can think of that is in the same ball park.

Cascading Reels

This slot also makes use of Exploding (or Cascading) Reels; and if you haven’t heard of them you must have been living under a rock.

After landing a winning combination, the symbols that contributed will explode from the grid, and brand-new icons will replace them from above. Thus giving you more chances to create Cluster Pays. Hurrah!

Consecutive cascading wins are also stored in the ‘Flag Release Gauge’ at the right of the grid. If you manage to fill it up, you will set off the delightful and completely bonkers bonuses.

The Pay Table

Your reel icons are made up of all things medieval; wells for water, targets (presumably for bow and arrow practice), joints of ham, toothy rabbits, frogs, dozy-looking goats, bulls and a toothy mushroom with dentures. The Wild symbol is the gold wine goblet which will substitute for all symbols on the reels. Except for the bonus icons, which are the gold and red crowns.

Slot Features

The Charging Knight: At random this brave knight will charge the grid and explode a row of symbols. These icons are then added to a queue at the bottom of the reels that’s used to make new clusters and to refill exploded icons. What a decent sort.

The Smashing Knight:  This angry chap is holding a spiked ball and chain and will randomly smash his weapon so that the grid is all shaken up – adding more symbols to the queue at the bottom.

The Counting Knight: Holding a quill, this fellow keeps track of your wins and activates the flag features from the top right of the reels.  All wins count, but the bigger the pay outs, the more symbols are added to the ‘Flag Release Gauge’.

Oh and FYI: Micro Knights is also available to play in free play mode here at Monkey Casino. Give the demo a spin and you can decide whether this ELK Studio release is for you before you part with your dosh in the real game.

The Bonuses

Fill up the flag meter with wins, and you’ll set off these flag bonus features!

Inferno
The rather sweet-looking purple dragon will burn away low-value symbols on the grid with his fiery breath so new icons can drop down.

Extra Wilds
3-15 Wilds are added at random to the grid to create extra cluster wins.

Super-Size Symbols
Colossal icons of up to 4×4 will land on the reels giving you a guaranteed win. Nice work!

Charge
Sir Charge will get rid of between 2-5 rows of symbols – bringing on new icons with more symbols added in the queue.

Epic Charge
Here you’ll get a guaranteed avalanche drop as up to 5 rows will be emptied.

Boosted Queue
The biggest and best of all the flag features:, all icons waiting in the queue will be added to the reels at once creating a maelstrom of wins on your reel grid.

Free Drops Bonus
You can set off the Free Drops feature, my fine friends, simply by hitting 3x of the crown Bonus symbols on the grid. Now you will receive 5 Free Drops where the queue and the Flag Release gauge will remain sticky. This means you will be setting off multiple lucrative bonuses all at once.

Betting Strategies

Some slot lovers like nothing more than a game plan. If this is you, you might want to have a go with the ELK Studios Betting Strategy feature. That allows you to plan your bets to match your play. So, the question is, are you in need of an Optimizer, Leveller, Booster or a Jumper?

It’s a leveller for me most of the time. Here are the betting strategies:

– The Optimizer Here your bet level adapts to a percent of your remaining balance

– The Leveller will raise the Total Bet on consecutive losses up to 10x the original bet

– The Booster raises the Total Bet after a loss but will reset after a win

– The Jumper This strategy raises the Total Bet after a win and resets after a loss.

The Volatility 

When it comes to the volatility in Micro Knights slot, I have done a few calculations and I would put this game in the medium/high variance category. 

This means you might find it takes time to scoop those bigger wins – but when you do, by Jove, you really can hit.

If you need a quick refresher course in volatility, I will make it simple for you: The terms volatility and variance mean the same thing.

And they both refer to a combination of 3 things that you’ll find in a slot: the frequency of the payouts, the amount paid out and the game’s level of risk. 

Risk v Budget

If you have a small budget, you will probably want to spin on slots that come with less risk so you can extend your game play with smaller but frequent wins. However, if you enjoy throwing caution to the wind and have a larger budget, you’ll most likely want to play medium/high variance slots that can net you substantial wins but less often.

As with most kinds of bets, the bigger the play, the bigger the pay. It’s common sense really compadres…

But whatever you do, please play safely.

The Developers

Hailing from Sweden, ELK Studios was formed back in 2013, and released their first online slot game one month later. A month after that, they put out their second game! Yes, these games makers were keen to make their mark on Slotland as fast as they could. 

ELK Studios were also innovators when they started out, using their now infamous ‘mobile first’ approach. They decided to create games designed to be played on personal devices (rather than on desktop) – making them the first ever developer to do so.

Since then, they have gone on to release over 40 slots (including my personal favourite Hit It Hard). And more are being released all the time. 

Nowadays ELK Studios are best known for producing extremely high quality slots. These come with wild and wacky themes and incredible attention to detail. Not forgetting those first-class HD graphics…

As such they are one of my favourite developers.

The Monkey Verdict:

Weird and rather wonderful – this slot might have you scratching your noggin to begin with as there is A LOT of crazy grid action. But the pays are consistent and the game play is really entertaining once you get the hang of it. Land the Free Spins and your screen could quite literally explode with wins.

And medieval Micro Knights, too, Bravo!

5 out of 5 bananas