Katmandu X

Six-reel, six-row grids mark the second half of a pairing Elk Studios calls Katmandu X, a game built by fusing the frozen mountain setting of Katmandu Gold with the mechanics of its cluster-pay slot Propaganda. Snow blankets the reel area and a pagoda emerges through falling symbols as the board empties and refills.

Wins land whenever matching icons sit adjacent to one another, vertically or horizontally, anywhere on the grid — Katmandu X pays on clusters rather than lines or ways. Four carved stone icons in blue, green, purple and red make up the lower-value symbols, with four animal icons above them. A cluster of exactly five pays 0.05 to 1.5 times the stake, climbing to 4-100 times the bet for clusters of sixteen or more matching icons. Cleared clusters trigger an avalanche that drops new symbols in from above and spawns a wild in the process.

Wilds come in three kinds here. A plain wild substitutes for any paying symbol; when two or more land in the same win they merge into a single wild carrying a multiplier that applies to later wins it takes part in, splitting back out if that combined wild belongs to more than one cluster. An exploding wild detonates the symbols around it and forces a redrop. Wild Strike can fire at random, swapping symbols on the board for any of the three wild types. Separately, a running multiplier applies to every winning cluster, climbing with each winning symbol and each symbol cleared by an exploding wild, and resets once the base game round ends.

Every symbol also comes in four sizes — 1x1, 2x2, 3x3 and 4x4 — and a big symbol that redrops crushes any regular-sized icons beneath it, leaving matching symbols, wilds and bonus icons untouched. Three bonus symbols award free drops with the multiplier held over between spins rather than reset, and landing a Yin & Yang icon adds extra spins; a Super bonus symbol among the three upgrades the round to the Super Bonus Game, which guarantees a Wild Strike loaded with exploding or multiplier wilds on every drop.

The X-iter menu offers five ways to buy in, from 2x the stake for better bonus odds up to 500x for direct entry to the Super Bonus. Katmandu X carries a 95% RTP, high volatility, and a maximum win of 25,000x, with stakes from 0.20 to 100 per spin.