Here Kitty Kitty: Slot Overview

The (friendly) battle for pet owners' attention continues, from living rooms across the globe to the gaming grids of the online slot world. What we're talking about is the struggle between cats and dogs over who gets the most love. IRL, dogs might have won the battle being 'humans' best friend' and all, but when it comes to gambling, the competition between cat slots and dog slots is fierce. Excellent releases are available in both categories, from the likes of Pragmatic Play's classic The Dog House Megaways and its ilk to moggy-themed games such as Phat Cats Megaways from Kalamba Games, not to mention a multitude of wild cat slots, such as King of Cats from BTG.

Today's slot isn't exactly a wild one, though, as Here Kitty Kitty from developer Red Tiger has a more domesticated focus. It takes place in about the most domesticated environment imaginable, that of a warm, cosy living room with a comfy armchair and selection of indoor plants. From the get-go, there was a suspicion Here Kitty Kitty would have a strong emphasis on cuteness. Its home screen is littered with cats, hearts, and contains the tagline 'Our furry friends are up to something…' An adorable start, and from there, the rest of Here Kitty Kitty turned out to be equally so.

Might as well come clean now and say that Here Kitty Kitty isn't one of Red Tiger's monsters. It is, though, a scatter pays/pay anywhere online slot, played on a game grid made up of 7 columns holding 7 symbols each. When at least 12 of the same symbols are in view anywhere on the board, a win is created, and players collect a payout. Winning symbols pop from the grid and are replaced by symbols dropping from above them by the cascade mechanic. With a medium-high volatile math model, players get a theoretical return of 95.73%, or 95.7%, when using the feature buy function. Bets of 10 p/c to £/€40 can be set, and the feature buy has a 50x the stake price tag.

Symbols now, and Here Kitty Kitty possesses 8 regular pays. The low pays are clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades designed to look like yarn bundles, while the high pay symbols are four cuddly moggies. When scatter wins consisting of 12-14 matching symbols hit, players win 0.5 to 5 times the bet, but if a win of 45+ matching symbols hits, the payout is 10 to 300 times the bet. Some scatter pay games shun wilds; some do not. Here Kitty Kitty is of the latter variety, and its fish in a fish bowl wild symbol substitutes for any regular paying symbol.

Here Kitty Kitty: Slot Features

Here Kitty Kitty is one of those slots that uses its cascade mechanic to feed a progress bar which then triggers features at certain waypoints. To use Here Kitty Kitty's specific lingo, winning symbols move the Yarn Ball along a 4-stage progress bar. Enough wins trigger features, which may go on to trigger more wins. As the paytable calls it – Purrpetual Motion. Adorable stuff.

The amount of symbols needed to fill stages 1, 2, 3, or 4 is 20, 30 more, 40 more, and 50 more, respectively. Once a stage is filled, a random modifier is activated. The modifier trigger at the end of a cascade sequence when no more wins form. One modifier triggers at a time, even if more than one modifier is available. Filling the first 3 stages can trigger Swap symbols, Destroy symbols, or Random wilds, while filling stage 4 always triggers Catmageddon.

  • Swap symbols – symbols from a random type on the grid are transformed into another random type of symbol.
  • Destroy symbols – random symbols on the grid are destroyed, making way for new symbols to drop onto the board.
  • Random wilds – random symbols on the reels are turned into wilds.

Catmageddon

When this feature triggers, a random cat pay symbol of 2x2 in size is placed at the bottom of the reels, and symbols drop in. Only the same symbols as the 2x2 chosen symbol are active; the rest are inactive, so they cannot create wins. Symbols of the same type as the chosen symbol remain on the grid and drop to the lowest possible position on their reels.

This process repeats until no new active symbol lands; then, a win evaluation takes place. New active symbols adjacent to the originally placed symbol can merge to create a larger chosen symbol of up to 7x7 in size with an x7 multiplier. Each time the placed symbol increases, its multiplier increases by +1, e.g. a 3x3 symbol has an x3 multiplier, a 4x4 symbol has an x4, etc.

Here Kitty Kitty: Slot Verdict

Is it okay to use the word adorable again for the third time? Apologies if this seems like overkill, but it was the overriding word which came to mind when putting Here Kitty Kitty through its paces. Kitty Kitty is not the sort of game that is likely to challenge a hardcore grid slot/anywhere pays enthusiast, but it's not really trying to do so either. Rather, the focus seems to be on building a warm, cuddly gaming experience with friendly-eyed felines which look like they'd happily leap off the screen to sit on a lap, curling up for a snooze while their owners watch something quietly relaxing on the telly.

Since Here Kitty Kitty is an online slot and not a stuffed cat toy, it does have claws, so it's unlikely to purr happily all of the time. In a nutshell, its gameplay is conducted in a Reactoonz-esque mode (with a pay-anywhere system), where collected winning symbols lead to feature triggers when the Yarn Ball has moved far enough along the progress bar. Even the game's climax, the Catmageddon, has hints of the Gargantoon about it. To be fair, though, Catmageddon is its own unique beast. Well, as much as a little ball of fur with big eyes could be called a beast. Stacking symbols that match the originally placed symbol while it grows in stature and ups its multiplier might be a bit of fun. There are limits to the fun, though, and at 2,135.45 times the bet, Here Kitty Kitty's limits aren't exactly way out there bending minds, changing all we know about pay-anywhere slots.

But again, that's unlikely to have been Red Tiger's mission when it embarked upon designing Here Kitty Kitty in the first place. Instead of being a ferocious example of grid slot mayhem, Here Kitty Kitty is all about the celebration of cute cats and brings together some charming feline specimens with familiar mechanics and an interesting capstone Catmageddon feature on top.