Bushido Gold

Elk Studios sets Bushido Gold in feudal Japan, the latest release in its long-running Gold series. The reels sit in front of a hillside fortress overlooking an open plain, and the mood stays subdued rather than bombastic, with quieter audio cues than the studio's usual style. Play runs on a 6-reel grid that starts at 4 rows and can grow to 8, so the number of ways to win climbs from a baseline of 4,096 into the millions as the grid expands and symbols split.

Nine regular symbols make up the paytable: card ranks from J through A, four animal icons, and four mask-style character symbols, with a warrior figure sitting at the top of the pay chart. Six matching symbols in a single win return between 0.3x and 5x the stake. All pay symbols except wilds can land oversized, covering 1x1, 2x2, 3x3 or 4x4 positions, and each big symbol counts as the equivalent number of standard positions toward a win.

Wins trigger an avalanche: winning symbols clear from the grid, a new row is added up to the 8-row cap, and fresh symbols drop to fill the gaps, chaining further avalanches if another win lands. Wilds substitute for every paying symbol, and when a wild takes part in a win, or survives to the end of a spin, it explodes, removing nearby pay symbols and setting off any feature symbols next to it, adding another row to the grid in the process. The Ninja symbol acts as a blocker that, once hit by a slice, a cannon or an exploding wild, throws between 2 and 10 stars across the grid to convert hit symbols into wilds or wake up other feature symbols. Cannon symbols are blockers of their own kind: once triggered they fire a column of wilds upward and expand the grid by a row, with a golden Cannon always maxing the grid out to 8 rows and a 2x2 big Cannon firing a two-symbol-wide column instead of one. A Slice feature fires when the same symbol appears in both the far-left and far-right columns of one row, doubling any pay symbols, scatters or wilds across that row and waking any Ninja or Cannon symbols it passes over.

Landing 3 scatters awards the Ninja Drops bonus: 6 free spins, plus 2 more for every additional scatter beyond the third. A Safety level climbs by one row each time a Ninja Drop produces a win, and every new Ninja Drop starts at whatever Safety level has been reached, with the Ninja symbol guaranteed to appear on each one. Players who don't want to wait can use the X-iter menu: a 2.5x stake Bonus Hunt spin or a 5x Mega Hunt spin both raise the odds of triggering a bonus without guaranteeing it, a Max Rows and Slice spin locks in an 8-row grid with a Slice on the first drop for 25x, the Ninja Drops bonus itself can be bought outright for 100x, and an 8-row-per-drop super version costs 500x the stake.

Bushido Gold carries a maximum RTP of 96%, with a 94% configuration also available, and is rated high volatility at 7 out of 10. Hit frequency runs at 20.9%, betting stretches from 0.20 up to 100 per spin, and the top prize on offer is 25,000x the stake.