Katmandu Gold Online Slot

The gold series from ELK continues to globetrot and here it is in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, and one of the most spectacular cities in the world. Here, Kathmandu is the venue for our treasure-hunting heroes, who are looking for bright and shiny things against a spectacular mountain backdrop.

The game has added two new features:

• One of them tailored to the specifics here, the Ice Climber feature, and
• the other Expanding Wins a less mountainous feature.

The grid is the playground for Kane, the hero of the game, and he has plenty of opportunities to get lucky, with a 262,144-ways-to-win set up rather than pay lines, and a big playing area that can go up to eight rows in height. There are six reels.

The game’s defining feature is an avalanche or cascading wins feature that you’ll see in a number of games that you’ll see today. The innovation in this game is that each new win adds an extra row to the screen, eventually pushing you up to that massive number of potential winning combinations. The Ice Climber system adds even more symbols.

Big symbols add even more bonus interest, and more conventionally there are also wilds. Expanding wins come into play only with wins and it’s an interesting example of a feature that we haven’t seen in another game. Free spins are the main separate bonus round. Feature sales aren’t available in the UK, so you’ll miss out on that aspect of the game.

This game is from ELK Studios, which has around 50 slots in the UK market. Despite this relatively small catalogue and relatively recent birth date in 2012, the company is rated as the 12^th biggest and most visible in the UK. Their biggest titles are two from this series, Tahiti Gold, and Ecuador Gold, followed by Knockout Diamonds, Cluster Slide, and another Gold game, Voodoo Gold.

ELK produces high-quality and good-looking games, with a globe-trotting angle on this series.

Let’s have a look!

How to Play Kathmandu Gold Slot

Kathmandu Gold is very simple to play. The spin button floats on the right of the reels.

The paytable starts with

• Jacks, queens, kings, and aces that payout .1, .15, .2, and .3-times stake.
• Then you have two runic symbols, a blue one and a green one and they pay 0.15, 0.25, 0.4, and 0.8-times stake.
• Then a pink and red symbol pays 0.2, 0.3, 0.5, and 1 times stake.
• A bird symbol pays 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 times stake.
• A big cat pays 0.75, 1.5, 2, and 2.5-times stake.
• The gold mask pays 1, 2, 2.5, and 3-times stake.
• Kane,the hero, pays 1.5, 3, 4, and 5-times stake.

There is a wild symbol, which stands in for everything except bonuses, and the Ice Climber symbol.

The game’s betting runs from 0.2 to 100 coins, which should be 20p to £100 in UK casino sites. Make sure that you are playing safely with money that you know you can afford to lose.

Bonus Features in Kathmandu Gold Slot

The wilds are the first bonus feature in the base game.

There are also avalanche wins. This is a cascade-style respin. After each win, any symbol involved in forming a winning combination explodes to allow new symbols to drop into place. There is also an extra row of symbols added to the top of the screen until we get to eight rows. Avalanches continue until there are no more new combinations.

There are also big symbols in all phases of the game. These can be double, 3 by 3, or 4 by 4 in size.

• The Ice Climber symbols trigger a feature. When two Ice Climber symbols appear on the reels they start to form a pillar of ice of new symbols. If it lands on the top row when the maximum 8 rows are in place then it will add another new row onto the top of the screen to make 9 rows.
• Expanding wins features are new. These are symbols with arrows. When these take their place in a winning combination the winning combination will continue to expand in the direction of the arrow.
• free drops are free spins rounds. These are awarded the bonus symbol, which gives players 10 drops for 3 symbols, 15 for 4, 20 for 5, and 25 for 6. The feature can retrigger following the same parameters.
• multiplier in the free drops round. The multiplier increases by one every time there is a bonus symbol on the reels.

The game has a betting strategies feature, though this, like the feature buy-in, is not available to UK players.

Kathmandu Gold Slot - The Verdict

This is a great game in our view and a really worthy addition to the Gold series.

The game was released in November 2020 and had very decent figures at the time. And they stand up well just a year later, with 96.2% RTP. The game has medium to high variance which means that it should pay out larger (than average) prizes and pay them out slightly less often (on average) than most other games on the market.

This game is beautifully presented visually and audibly. There’s a lot of gameplay innovation here that means you can enjoy tension and engagement throughout the game. While a couple of these features aren’t available in the UK, there’s more than enough to keep players interested.

The mega symbols liven up all levels of the game. Multipliers are always popular, and there’s no one who doesn’t like a free spins round with no limits on retriggers and with an increasing multiplier.

The figures don’t lie, and a 10,000-times stake top prize here could mean a cool million. While that’s extremely unlikely, players are obviously enjoying this game enough to stick around and find out whether it’s going to drop.

This is a really great addition to a wonderful series and we hope you’ll continue to travel the world with it.