Samurai’s Katana

Theme and Design

Samurais On Rollerblades In A Futuristic Neon City

Katana are the traditional swords that ancient Samurais would carry and past meets future in this instance where the samurais are young warriors, roller-blading their way through a neon-lit streets of a future city, Katana’s strapped to their backs and headphones on. The vibe is a cool one and the artwork of a high quality as you would expect from any Push Gaming slot. The sound effects are superb too, with plenty of loud clanking sword sounds as symbols come to rest. If you like futuristic games with an Oriental flavour then this will be right up your street.

RTP and Variance

Samurai’s Katana is built with five possible RTP rates and it will be at the casino operator’s discretion which rate to choose for their players. The rates are 96.4%, 95.26%, 94.31%, 90.30% and 88.26%. In the UK there are many slot sites that run games at lower than optimum settings, sometimes even less than 90% and they should be avoided. You can check the RTP wherever you play by hitting the hamburger button on the top right of the reel set and scrolling through the Game Info page until you see Return to Player.

I recommend playing at Casumo or Dream Vegas casinos, both of which consistently run slots at the optimum RTP rate from the provider.

This is also a high variance game so expect a lot of volatility in the payout distribution. It can produce some big wins but may also be a grind at times.

Maximum Win

The maximum win here is 10,000x. That is good, but well short of the potential in Push Gaming’s highest max win slots, many of which have top wins of 50,000x, including Jammin’ Jars 2 and Dinopolis.

Symbols and Paytable

The game format here is a simple paylines one with 5 reels, 4 rows and 20 paylines to form wins on. The wins are triggered when 3 or more identical symbols appear on a line from left to right, starting at the left-most reel.

The paytable offers good value in Samurai’s Katana. The low value symbols are the cards, 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace. These appear to be printed on SIM-chip phone cards and are valued at from 0.1x for 3 on a line up to 1x for 5 on a line. The premiums are the gun, the roller blade, and the female then male samurais. These are valued at from 0.3x for 3 on a line up to 50x for 5 samurais on a line.

There is also a wild, represented by 2 swords crossed, in the game which will substitute for any pay symbols to complete paylines. It is valued at 60x for 5 on a line. They drop on reels 2, 3 and 4 in the base game, and ALL reels 1 to 5 in the free spins round.

Features and Gameplay

Wild Stacks and Nudges

You will notice that Wild Stacks are also available in this game. When they land they stay on the reels, nudging down one row with each successive spin until they drop off the reels.

Instant Prizes Worth Up to 1,000x

The instant prizes in Samurai’s Katana are worth between 1x and 1,000x and land only on reels 1 or 5. To activate them you will need to land two wilds simultaneously on adjacent reels ANWHERE on the grid.

Unlocking Free Spins With Scatters and Gamble Scatters 

The headline act here is the free spins round. It has a slightly unusual mechanism to unlock it, requiring you to land a scatter on reel 1 and a gamble scatter on reel 5.

First of all, the regular scatter drops on reel 1 to let you know that the game is on. However, you now have to wait to see if the gamble scatter lands on reel 5, which stops a few seconds after the first reel. If the gamble scatter lands then it displays a prize of either a multiplier of 1x, 3x, 5x, 10x, 25x or 100x, to be applied to a free spins round that now plays out, OR 1, 2 or 3 wild stacks to be applied to the next spin in the base game.

This is a gamble feature, so you can opt to accept the prize you get, or gamble to increase it to the next one in the list. Just remember that if you lose then you will go back to the base game with nothing!

Free Spins Round With Guaranteed Stacked Wilds

The only way to make it to the free spins round via the gamble feature. If you landed a gamble scatter displaying a multiplier you are in. The 2^nd and 4^th reels are GUARANTEED to start with a stacked wild each and your wins have the multiplier you picked up from the scatter applied to them.

During the round, every nudge of a stacked wild will fill a meter displayed to the side of the reels. Every FIVE nudges takes you to the next multiplier level of 1x, 3x, 5x, 10x, 25x or 100x. 

Clearly your objective here should be to keep landing wild stacks and get that multiplier up as high as you can.