Cathedral 9: Slot Overview

Scatter pays has well and truly swept through the online slot scene, and it feels like every developer and their dog wants a piece of it. One studio that’s delivered a few takes on the format—without going completely over the top (so far)—is ELK Studios, responsible for titles like Hula Balua, Ashoka, and Mine Defender. Still, once scatter paying gets under your skin, it’s tough to drop, and the studio has returned to the scatteration style with Cathedral 9, a slot that blends a mix of classic and newer ELK Studios mechanics.

Cathedrals can be inspiring places—sunlight spilling through stained glass, towering vaulted ceilings, and, if you’re fortunate, a choir or other uplifting music echoing around. Cathedral 9’s base game doesn’t really go for that vibe, instead presenting a bleak, shadowy setting where wall statues loom over heaps of steaming rocks scattered across the floor. Why? Fair question—perhaps because the game revolves around a coffin feature, and as the game sheet puts it, these are “coffins overflowing with unimaginable treasure.” Things do look brighter once free spins kick in, but in terms of atmosphere, Cathedral 9 sits on the heavier side alongside games like Phoenix Graveyard, Phoenix Graveyard 2, and Nightmaker.

Cathedral 9 is a scatter pays slot running on a 6×5 gaming area, paying out when 8 or more matching symbols appear on the grid. One thing it doesn’t try to hide is its medium-high volatile maths, delivering ELK Studios’ familiar 94% RTP whether you’re wagering $/€0.20 to $/€100 per spin or purchasing features via the X-iter.

The paytable starts with four pip symbols, followed by five different object symbols tied to the theme. Scatter wins of 8 matching symbols return 0.1x to 2x, increasing to 2x to 50x for 25+ of a kind. Any paying symbol may also appear as 2×2, 3×3, or 4×4-sized big symbols, which pay based on how many 1×1 positions they occupy. Big symbols replicate into empty cells beneath them using matching 1x1s. Once no further wins are available, a big symbol may spawn and replace others. Wilds replace all paying symbols, and an all-wild hit pays as the top symbol.

Cathedral 9: Slot Features

Cathedral 9 is packed with mechanics, including a feature reel, feature symbols, mystery coffins, Entombed, a global multiplier, Holy collect, bonus rounds, and X-iter feature buys.

Feature Reel

The 2×6 Feature Reel contains feature symbols as well as empty spaces. When wins remove symbols (excluding mystery coffins), features can fall into the openings, followed by a symbol drop. This sequence repeats for as long as wins keep landing.

Collector & Explosion Symbols

Collector symbols activate when there are no more wins. It selects one pay symbol in view and collects every instance of it into a single spot. Pay symbols inside coffins are excluded from collection. Explosion symbols also trigger when there are no more wins, and they remove all pay symbols on their own column and the columns next to it.

Mystery Coffins & Global Multiplier

Mystery coffins activate once they reach the bottom, revealing matching symbols or wild. After wins are paid, they nudge down and reveal again until no wins remain. Super coffins behave the same way but add their multiplier to the global one. In addition, mini coffins create a mystery coffin above them when they land. The global multiplier begins at x0 and is activated when a super mystery coffin reaches the bottom of the grid, staying active until the end of the game round or free drop. Super mystery coffins can carry values from x2 to x1,000.

Entombed Feature

This feature triggers when the entombed symbol covers the entire Feature Reel and triggers when no more wins appear. All symbols on the grid are replaced with one paying symbol type. The Super Entombed feature triggers when the super entombed symbol covers the entire Feature Reel. All symbols are replaced with one pay symbol type of high or mid values.

Holy Collect

The Holy collect can trigger on any spin or free drop. Energy is added to the holy collect when a holy blocker drops from the feature reel. The state of the holy collect is kept between game rounds, and it adds 3-6 coffins to the grid when triggered. Every game round has the same probability of triggering the holy collect feature.

Bonus

Hitting 3-6 bonus scatters launches the free drops bonus round. Each scatter grants 2, 3, or 4 free drops. The global multiplier is persistent between free drops. Mystery coffins that reach the bottom of the grid activate the global multiplier if it already has an inactive value. The global multiplier inactivates between free drops. Extra free spins are awarded by landing scatters, in the same way they are given when the bonus initially triggers.

Winning on all 9 pay symbols in bonus mode triggers the super bonus, awarding 2, 3, or 4 additional free drops. Each free drop starts with 1-6 super mystery coffins added to the grid. Only super coffins appear in the super bonus game. In the bonus game, all inactive super mystery coffins activate between free drops.

X-iter

Cathedral 9’s X-iter includes Bonus Hunt for 2.5x, buying a game round with more than triple the chance of triggering free drops, while Mega Bonus Hunt is priced at 10x and makes the bonus more than 10 times more likely to trigger. Coffin Drop costs 50x and purchases a round featuring 1-6 random mystery coffins, while the bonus or super bonus can be bought for 100x or 500x, respectively.

Cathedral 9: Slot Verdict

Cathedral 9 pulls together a lot of what ELK Studios has been focusing on recently. Two standout elements are the dark religious/supernatural presentation up front and the scatter pays engine driving the gameplay. ELK Studios rarely releases anything that looks rough, and Cathedral 9 continues that run. It might not be the studio’s most instantly striking title, but it’s put together with real polish, and the church backdrop plus choral soundtrack do a superb job of setting the tone for coffin-digging in pursuit of the “nine ancient artefacts.”

That line refers to landing wins with all 9 pay symbols during free spins, which is the requirement to unlock the super bonus, where up to six super mystery coffins can show up on each spin. Standard coffins can do solid work by revealing matching symbols, but the super variant is stronger thanks to its ability to boost the global multiplier, which can end up being pivotal. Feature symbols dropping from a feature reel is another familiar ELK Studios trick—seen in games like Gritty Kitty of Nitropolis, Tropicool 4, and Mystic Orbs—and it pairs neatly with avalanches and symbol-clearing effects. The last tempting touch is the entombed symbol looming over the feature reel, teasing the possibility of covering it completely and, in turn, flooding the whole grid with a single symbol type. It’s arguably a bit much given the largest wins are 25+ of a kind, but it can still be a thrilling mechanic.

Cathedral 9 comes across as ELK Studios leaning further into heavier themes while continuing to build out its feature set. It doesn’t feel like a release that stretches the studio’s limits to the extreme. Even so, Cathedral 9 is a confidently made slot loaded with features that can perform well individually or as combinations—though it’s when several of them fire together that the game really hits its stride. And with a 25,000x win cap, who knows—maybe those coffins really can deliver on the “unimaginable treasure” promise.