Pokie Katmandu Gold Review

Slot Review

Written by: Daniel C. White, Founder December 1, 2020 at 1:26PM

Last Updated: June 15, 2023 at 11:11PM (Philip M. Shull)

Read Time: 3 min.

How to Play Katmandu Gold Slot

If you are familiar with ELK Studios’ pokies, you’ll have no issues navigating the slot settings. The initial screen is pretty much similar to other titles that have a 6×4 layout. But as you get consecutive payouts, reels expand.

• There are all regular controls on the screen. It’s a ‘ways to win’ type of slot and therefore Kiwi punters pay a price for a single round instead of setting a line bet. The min is €0.20 and the max is €100.
• Autoplay is activated either by pushing a special Auto button or by holding down the Spin for a couple of seconds and releasing.
• The initial layout is 6×4 but wins trigger avalanches and reel expansion. A series of lucky avalanches gets you to the very top where you have a 6×9 grid and 531,441 ways to win.

Game Features

Packed with features, the title immediately draws attention but shows its full power as you do some exploring. Katmandu Gold free play is the perfect solution for this purpose. Take as much time as you need to get familiar with all the great stuff the studio has thrown into the mix and the truly authentic environment it built.

Bonuses

The max win is 10,000x, and the way to land it is by activating Free Drops. There are up to 25 of them, but each drop can extend if similar symbols form a win. Such combinations explode giving way to new icons and potentially new wins. The cycle goes on until new combinations keep landing. Typically, avalanches trigger a multiplier upgrade. But ELK Studios decided to let each bonus icon be that trigger, and every time it appears, the multiplier goes up.

The pack of Free Drops is either activated randomly by landing 3 bonus icons or by using a Katmandu Gold bonus buy. And if the choice is to take a shortcut, there are standard and super bonuses priced at 100x and 500x, respectively. Both feature a persistent multiplier that doesn’t reset between drops. But one is called ‘super’ for a reason, and that reason is its initial x10 multiplier. Other features to love are:

• Up to 4×4 icons
• Avalanche (cascading reels)

Ice Climber and Expanding Win

The game performs extremely well. Many factors contribute to its performance, and one of them is the Expanding Win feature. It’s when any regular or wild icon points up or down or both ways instead of having a square shape. The direction of the arrows shows where the symbol will expand. It doesn’t expand every single time, but only when part of a winning combination.

Ice Climber is similar in the way that it expands, but is different because it reveals a new set of random icons and affects only symbols located above. If it happens to appear on the last row, it makes room for one more row.

RTP and Variance

Katmandu Gold has parameters that would suit a variety of New Zealand gamblers. Volatility is 7/10, which is above the medium level. It doesn’t take too many spins to get a payoff as the hit frequency is 22.4%. So, on average there’s a win roughly every fourth round.

RTP is 96.2% which is on the higher side of the expected range. But there’s a way to improve it just a tiny bit. Feature buy gets you an additional 0.1% to the average return, or 0.2% when a super bonus is bought. The difference is small and impossible to notice when you play. Unfortunately, you can’t activate the Katmandu Gold demo bonus buy to run an experiment.

Slot Rating

Katmandu Gold Symbols and Paytable

6	x5
5	x4
4	x3
3	x1.5

6	x3
5	x2.5
4	x2
3	x1

6	x2.5
5	x2
4	x1.5
3	x0.75

6	x2
5	x1.5
4	x1
3	x0.5

6	x1
5	x0.5
4	x0.3
3	x0.2

6	x1
5	x0.5
4	x0.3
3	x0.2

6	x0.8
5	x0.4
4	x0.25
3	x0.15

6	x0.8
5	x0.4
4	x0.25
3	x0.15

6	x0.3
5	x0.2
4	x0.15
3	x0.1

6	x0.3
5	x0.2
4	x0.15
3	x0.1

6	x0.3
5	x0.2
4	x0.15
3	x0.1

6	x0.3
5	x0.2
4	x0.15
3	x0.1

Wild

Scatter

Special

Screenshots