Micro Knights (ELK Studios): Overview

It may not be what they’re best known for, but ELK Studios have stepped into the cluster pays space with their new Micro Knights release. The vibe is reminiscent of Relax Gaming’s’ Snake Arena, with a hint of Rabcat’s Treasure Heroes mixed in. On mobile, Micro Knights genuinely looks like a polished smartphone title you’d pick up from iTunes or Google Play. The visuals are compact and finely detailed, and the same is true of the grid. In portrait you barely notice it, but in landscape the grid is reduced to show more of the countryside around it. It’s among the smallest grids you’re likely to come across. Luckily, today’s phone screens are sharp enough to handle it—years ago it would have been a pixelated mess. Beside the grid are knights who occasionally jump into the fray, along with a dragon that strongly resembles Toothless the Night Fury from How To Train Your Dragon.

The gameplay unfolds on a chess-themed 7×7 grid, with 49 symbols dropping into place on every spin. Micro Knights runs on a cluster pays mechanic, so any group of 5 or more identical symbols touching each other pays out. When a win lands, those symbols disappear and new ones fall into the empty spaces. It’s a familiar setup, and one that can create win chains from a single spin. In Micro Knights, it’s also the core method used to bring many of the features into play.

To play, you can set your stake anywhere from 20 c/p to $/€100 per spin – either manual or auto, which is referred to as traditional betting. ELK has again included their four betting strategies – Jumper, Booster, Leveller and Optimiser for anyone who prefers a more tactical approach. As for symbols, like most grid slots, everything is designed specifically for this game. Low pays include meat on the bone, water wells, arrow targets, and mushrooms. Higher-value symbols are bunnies, frogs, goats, and bulls. The top payout comes from a cluster of 20 or more bulls, returning 250 times the stake. The last symbol worth highlighting here is the golden chalice, which acts as a wild and can replace any symbol except the bonus symbol.

Key stats include a return to player rate that sits at a solid, middle-of-the-road 96%. The overall potential isn’t especially thrilling, unfortunately, as ELK has chosen to cap the game again, though the medium/high variance math model does help balance frequent smaller hits with larger, feature-driven wins.

Micro Knights (ELK Studios): Features

As any strong grid slot should, Micro Knights is capable of going on satisfying streaks of back-to-back wins. Those sequences are easily the highlight, and you’ll want as many features firing as possible to keep them going. The opening spins can feel a bit puzzling, but if you’ve played other grid slots such as Reactoonz, for example, you’ll pick it up quickly.

One of the most frequent mechanics is The Queue, and it’s also the trickiest to describe. On the left side of the reels you’ll see the Charging Knight, who randomly sprints across the grid and shoves a row away. That row is pushed beneath the gird, and its symbols are arranged into a queue.

Identical symbols are collected together. For instance, if there are two clusters of three bunnies on the grid, and the next items in the queue are two bunnies, then the queued symbols will drop onto every cluster on the grid where they can complete a win. In this example, both groups of 3 bunnies. After those symbols are taken from the queue, the next symbols can be applied if they fit. Any fresh spin clears the queue completely. At the top left of the grid is the Smashing Knight. He can also appear randomly, and when he does, he increases each symbol counter in the queue by one.

In addition to cluster pays, there’s a win meter on the right side of the grid. Every winning cluster advances the meter, and once it fills, it triggers one of these Feature Flags each time it completes, in this order:

• Inferno – the dragon burns all low value symbols from the grid.
• Extra Wilds – places 3 to 15 wilds on the grid at random.
• Super Size – drops a big sized symbol up to 4×4 onto the grid.
• Charge –moves 2-5 rows of symbols into the queue.
• Epic Charge – moves all of the symbols into the queue.
• Boosted Queue – uses all of the symbols in the queue to make winning combos.

As long as clusters keep landing, the meter continues to fill and keeps awarding features. In the base game, however, the meter resets on every new spin.

The last feature is the Bonus Game, activated when 3 bonus symbols appear. The bonus round gives 5 free spins, and during these the win meter and the queue become sticky, meaning they do not reset between spins.

Micro Knights (ELK Studios): Verdict

Micro Knights is one of those slots where you’ll spot echoes of other games in several places. Even so, it doesn’t come across as a lazy copy or a rushed project. In fact, it’s impressively assembled—from the strong intro to the richly detailed artwork, ELK Studios clearly put their talent to work. There’s plenty of character throughout, and enough feature layers to make the experience feel fairly distinctive. It’s also genuinely enjoyable, with that slightly addictive “just one more” pull.

A big part of the appeal is the pace. Another part is that a single spin can be enough to kick off a chain of features, which is especially satisfying when multiple effects connect together. It’s far easier to achieve that in free spins, and it becomes obvious why you only start with 5.

Even though ELK has delivered a pretty solid grid slot, there are drawbacks as well. The main complaint is the maximum potential, which ELK—again for reasons unknown—has limited to 2,500 times the stake. That alone makes it feel less dangerous than the top-tier grid slot heavyweights. Putting it up against those monsters is like matching Aunt Franny’s Chihuahua with the neighbour’s Pitbull. While it can keep running when the features link up, it doesn’t reach the same level of chaos as ultra-volatile grid slots like Dragon Fall or Jammin’ Jars that can go on and on.

Still, Micro Knights is a well-crafted title with lots of entertaining moments and engaging mechanics. It may be slightly lacking in raw power to be a true standout, but it’s absolutely worth a couple of sessions.