You have to hand it to kings; they certainly possess plenty of self-confidence. Well, some of them, at least. It must be all that bowing and 'your majesty' going on around them from the moment they are born. Take Alfonso X of Castile, for example, who apparently said, 'Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.' It'd be interesting to know exactly what those hints might have been. That brings us to today's slot, The Knight King, from software provider Pragmatic Play. What it has are devices such as Special Money symbols and free spins, but The Knight King might have benefited from the injection of a few more kingly hints during its creation.
If you're the sort of person who likes wild forests, mountainous regions, and fairy tale castles reaching to the skies from clifftops, prepare to be swept away by the romantic location The Knight King provides. For a real-life comparison, Neuschwanstein Castle, perched above a forest in Germany, is a good example. One view of this ridiculously picturesque Bavarian Schloss is all it takes to justify King Ludwig's (for whom the castle was built) nickname as the 'Fairy Tale King'. It's a fairy tale-type environment players are invited to inhabit when playing The Knight King, which does lay a delicate scene.
>The Knight King may be played on any device, and it lets players do so by offering them stakes of 20 p/c to $/€100. This one does not have an Ante Bet, but it does let certain people buy free spins; doing so comes with an RTP of 95.97%, compared to the 96.05% generated when betting regularly. Highly volatile, the game matrix comprises 5 reels, 3 rows, and 20 paylines - all rather traditional so far, just like the theme itself.
Along those lines, winning combinations consist of three to five matching symbols starting from the leftmost side and landing on adjacent reels. For lows, we find 10 though Ace royals, whereas high pays are a horse, a lady, a man, and a dragon. Payouts vary from 1 to 2.5x the bet when five low pays hit or 3.5x to 7.5x for a five premium symbol hit. Another horse appears on the wild symbol, landing on all five reels. Wilds pay a hefty 300x the bet for a line of five of them, or they may be used to substitute for any normal pay symbol.
>Blink, and you might miss this part as The Knight King is a little light on features. One of them is the Special Money symbol. On any base game spin, one of the pay symbols or the wild may be randomly selected. These Special Money symbols then land with values of 0.5-20x the bet, and all instances of them in view are awarded.
Hitting 3 scatter symbols on reels 1, 3, and 5 awards 3x the bet as well as 7 free spins. While the bonus round is going, landing 2 scatters on reels 2 and 4 triggers +4 additional free spins. Now, before free spins commence, one of the pay symbols or the wild is randomly selected to be the Special Money symbol for the full duration of the round. Also, at the start of the feature, the chosen symbol is assigned a random value; 1-7x the bet for the pay symbols or 11-20x the bet for the wild. As before, whenever Special Money symbols land, their values are collected and awarded. Each time a collection occurs, the value of the Special Money symbol increases by a random amount taken from the possible values set.
Should you desire to charge straight into the fray, if the Buy Free Spins bonus is present in your jurisdiction, clicking it lets players buy free spins entry for the cost of 80x the bet.
>Yeah, nah, not so convinced by this one. The Knight King felt like a game Pragmatic Play phoned in. The sort of thing the team could have knocked out blindfolded the day before it was due to be shipped. Just about everything about The Knight King came across as half effort, maybe less, with nothing exceptional to cling onto and justify its existence. The name's confusing, the visuals, while possessing the usual Pragmatic Play gloss, are mediocre, and the features flat. It's a game built around dropping symbols with extra monetary values onto the reels; that's it. Not the worst thing to collect a few money symbol rewards, but it's not the most imaginatively exciting idea the studio's ever come up with.
Perhaps if other side features had accompanied the Special Money symbols idea, The Knight King wouldn't have seemed so devoid of blazing original thought. Okay, in free spins, one symbol is selected to be the Special Money symbol throughout. And if winning cash was the only thing that counted when playing an online slot, then The Knight King is capable of dropping a few of these chosen Special Money symbols here or there to provide hits. At full strength, The Knight King's going to be charging at you with wins of up to 5,000x the bet. A solid number, yet it was tough to imagine that amount happening IRL, going by how the test sessions played out.
And so, players wild about romantic representations of the Middle Ages – dashing knights, princesses, bad guys in plate armour, full moons, and dragons, might be onboard with The Knight King. Or players who like simplistic gameplay. For the rest, it might be tough to muster up much enthusiasm for a game that just doesn't seem like it's really trying.
Play for real money
