Knight Fight

Knight Fight: Slot Overview

Swedish software provider ELK Studios has turned out bundles of excitingly innovative online slots over the years, from the Gold games, the Nitropolis series, to the Toro lineup. One popular set of slots from the studio stars a gaggle of feisty avian entities in the team's Pirots range - to date, three of them have been released. When you're on to a good thing in the gambling industry, it makes a certain business sense to ride it out until the wheels fall off before abandoning the project for something new. In the spirit of squeezing extra mileage out of an entertaining concept comes Knight Fight, a revival of ELK Studios' CollectR mechanic and a reskin of Pirots 2.

Knight Fight is not the first time ELK Studios has tangled with the medieval world. An earlier example was the cluster pays slot Micro Knights, and if you go back to take a look, the characters in both games are rather similar to each other, particularly that purple dragon. The same eccentric spirit has returned, gelling perfectly with the already eccentric nature of the Pirots games. Like Print Studios' Holy Hand Grenade, Knight Fight has a look and feel that isn't a million miles away from something Monty Python might have done if they'd been in the business of making slots. There's even a goat in this game, too.

Hitting the spin button, after picking a stake of 10 c to $/100, drops symbols and 4 collector knights onto a 6x6 gaming area. Knight Fight does not use lines, ways, scatter pays, or clusters to make wins. Instead, it relies on its CollectR mechanic and its 4 knights to travel around the board, where able, to collect pay symbols, feature symbols, and the like. As before, volatility is high, and the RTP is 94%, even when using the X-iter feature buys.

Knights collect crest pay symbols to award their values. There are four types of crest symbols; each type may be collected by a knight of the same colour. Crest symbols come in 7 value levels. The lowest levels are worth 0.05 to 0.1 times the bet; the highest is 10 to 50 times the bet. Wilds substitute for pay symbols

Knight Fight: Slot Features

Knight Fight has 4 knight collector symbols that move around the reels in descending order of symbol value. Each knight is linked to a crest symbol of the same colour. Knights collect adjacent crest symbols of the same colour and feature symbols by moving orthogonally around the board. After all possible symbols have been collected, new symbols are dropped in to fill the gaps, pricing another chance for collecting. This means knights can move more than once on the same spin, including before a refill. Collecting a feature symbol triggers the symbol's feature.

Symbol Collection Meter

The symbol collection meter keeps track of collected crest and wild symbols. The meter keeps collecting until the knights can't collect any more symbols. When the meter is full, one pending feature symbol release is added. Up to 3 feature symbol releases may be stacked at the same time. All stacked feature symbol releases are awarded at the same time. Feature symbol releases are awarded just before the goat turns evil, before the dragon flame strikes, as part of the first free spin, or when knights can't collect any more symbols. A feature symbol release converts a number of random crest symbols into random feature symbols. Aside from Scatters and Wilds, feature symbol types are:

• Coins - a collected coin symbol pays its displayed value. The MAX WIN coin awards the remaining amount needed to hit the maximum win.
• Upgrade Symbols - upgrades by 1-3 levels the payout level of crest symbols of the same colour as the knight that collected the upgrade symbol, up to 7. Collected upgrade all symbols upgrade all four crest symbols.
• Goat Symbols - when collected by a knight, it turns evil at the end of the spin when no more symbols can be collected. The knights are scared away from the grid, dropping them in new places.
• Transform Symbols - when collected, it transforms a cluster of crest symbols next to the knight into the same colour as the collecting knight. It may convert a random number of crest symbols into feature symbols.
• Golden Apple Basket Symbols - places Apples in empty spaces when collected. Knights can then cross these empty spaces one time each to reach symbols.
• Dragon Egg - a dragon egg or a dragon flame symbol collected by a knight triggers a dragon flame strike at the end of the spin when no more symbols can be collected. It removes knights and any symbols except feature symbols in close proximity to it, causing a redrop to fill the gaps. The dragon flame strike expands the grid up to 8x8. A collected Goat will trigger before a collected Dragon Egg.

Adjacent knights may perform a Switcheroo where they swap places vertically or horizontally when they can collect more symbols. It may only happen if new clusters of symbols can be unlocked. If 3 or more knights end up horizontally and/or vertically next to each other, they fight on a random area of the grid. Scatters, coins, goats, and dragon egg symbols in the fight's path are collected, while crest symbols are removed. Knights redrop when the fight is over. A symbol drop refills the empty spaces.

Free Spins

If 3 scatter symbols are collected on a spin, 5 free spins are awarded. Free spins start with the current active number of rows and reels. The current collection meter progress is brought over, and any pending feature symbol releases are triggered on the first free spin. The grid size, progress on the symbol collection meter, payout level of crest symbols, and collection of scatter symbols are persistent in free spins. Collecting 3 scatter symbols awards additional free spins.

X-iter

Knight Fight's X-iter offers these bonus buys:

• Bonus Hunt - one spin with 4x the chance of triggering free spins for 3x the bet.
• Golden Apple Feast - one spin with the Golden Apple Basket feature triggered from the start for 10x the bet.
• Maximum Grid Size - one spin played with the maximum grid size for 25x the bet.
• Bonus - 100x the bet.
• Super Bonus - 500x the bet. All free spins are played with the maximum grid size, and all upgrade symbols upgrade all crest symbols.

Knight Fight: Slot Verdict

Not sure what the initial expectations of Knight Fight were, but they weren't of a Pirots 2 reskin. ELK Studios isn't particularly big on clones and reskins, preferring to let their prodigious talent for taking players to new and exciting players pour forth in uniquely individual games. Oh sure, ELK has no qualms about running a series out over the course of years or making twists and turns to successful gameplay, but rarely do they bring back the exact same set of mechanics covered in a game world it's arguably explored before. This is not a complaint, a rage into the wind over the unfairness of life, but rather just an observation, ruminating on Knight Fight's family tree.

Knights, after all, could pull out family trees called pedigrees to show who was the first in the family to attain a coat of arms. Knight Fight relies heavily on its 4 knights to drive the action, and the chaps here have about as much personality as the 4 parrots of the Pirots game did, being humorous to watch in action, darting about the grid, collecting stuff, getting into fisticuffs. As before, symbol upgrades are critical to getting solid wins. As are coins. So much so that there is a wonder how (or if) Knight Fight's 10,000x top prize is achievable without collecting the MAX WIN coin.

As it often is, the second time around wasn't as thrilling as the first, but Knight Fight was at least almost as entertaining as Pirots 2. You could say that technically, it is almost impossible not to be since the same features and gameplay have been brought over. The end result is a slot that's about on par with the game it was made from, not as must-see, let's say, but still a charming romp through the Middle Ages, collecting stuff along the way.