In 2024, war is about to break out — the Battle of Nitropolis. In what is to become a five-stage battle plan between four clans and the evil Sergent Nitro Wolf, who had banished them from Nitropolis. The release of Gritty Kitty of Nitropolis is the first wave of attack. This grandiose plan comes to us courtesy of award-winning developer ELK Studios.

There will be five slot releases by ELK Studios that capture the full battle between the four clans and Sergent Nitro Wolf. Next will be Rogue Rats, Dirty Dawgs, and then Pug Thugs. The 5th and final will be called Nitropolis 5.

In this online slot review for Gritty Kitty of Nitropolis, I look at the strategy of play and how this battle looks to play out. I will be sharing the software details and programming performance and looking at the bonuses and potential payout. 

Are you ready for a new war?

The Gritty Kitty of Nitropolis is a sci-fi-themed game that is set in the backstreet areas of Tokyo. I cannot confirm how all games will look at this stage, but Gritty Kitty comes with a ways-to-win feature that plays out on a 4x6 layout that can expand to 8x6.

Above the reels is a monitor that acts as a feature reel. This comes with a 3x6 layout, and the symbols within activate features drop into the main slot below. These features include Nitro Match, Nitro Wild, and Nitro Upgrade.

Within the base game, you have standard in-game features that include Nitro Reels, Big Symbols, Max Rows, TNT, Wild, and Big Coin.  This is a big game, and all the big weapons are out to help you and the Gritty Kitty clan succeed in this game. 

The accompanying music is dramatic and climatic and perfectly adds to the atmosphere of the game’s setting. 

When you load the demo game or the real money version, you must pick what cost you want to play per spin. The game defaults to $1 a play, but your options range from $0.20 to $100 per spin. Click on the stacked coins icon to select the value. Because Gritty Kitty of Nitropolis is a game without standard slot paylines, wins are based on forming matching symbols across adjacent reels in any position. If three to six of the same symbols are scattered across adjacent reels, then you will strike a payout. This is the Ways to Win feature, and in total, Gritty Kitty of Nitropolis comes with 262,144 ways to win when the game is in its full 8x6 layout. In its more basic format of 4x6, you will have up to 4,096 ways to win.

When you are ready to play, press the large spin button to the right of the reels. You can opt for auto-play if you want to kick back and let the game do its thing. What you will notice with forming wins is that the symbols involved are eliminated from the reels and replaced by symbols that appear in the feature reel above the game. This produces what is called a cascade or avalanche effect, and from one spin, multiple wins can be consecutively performed if the right symbols repeatedly drop into the main grid from above.

Now, Gritty Kitty of Nitropolis is a huge game with a lot of in-game features and bonuses to trigger. Here is a brief look at how these can benefit your game time. 

• Nitro Match: This will swap all symbols within a Nitro Reel to a matching payout symbol.
• Nitro Wild: This Wild will turn all Nitro Reel symbols into Wilds.
• Nitro Upgrade: All symbols in the Nitro Reel become upgraded to higher-value symbols.
• TNT Symbol: The TNT causes all payout symbols to explode across adjacent reels.
• Big Coin: If covering an entire feature reel, you will be awarded an instant payout.
• Nitro Reels: Green illuminated reels with counters on them that go up to 12. This counter shows how many additional 1x1 symbols are embedded. You can also trigger Big Nitro Reels that are 2x2 and carry a value of up to six.
• Max Rows: This indicates when the reels expand from 4x6 to 8x6.
• Assassin Spins: The purple Assassin Symbol needs to fill the feature reel to trigger the feature. In this round, coin symbols feature, and the object of the round is to land as many coins as possible that will stick in place. You will have three spins; for every coin landed, your free spin counter resets. 
• Bonus Game: Look out for the satellite Bonus Symbols. If you land three, you get eight spins, four rewards, ten spins, five symbols get you 12 spins, and 6 Bonus symbols present you with 14 free spins. During this round of play, additional free spins can be won, and the bonus game itself can be retriggered. Also, you will play all your free spins on the Max Rows format. 

When a developer like ELK Studios drops a game, you have to take notice. I think the fact they are dropping a five-game series with backstory shows just how convinced they are that The Battle of Nitropolis will work. 

The slot looks to be one of ELK’s biggest games in terms of the features that go into forming the slot. The game also comes with their new X-iter feature, which is their version of the Bonus Buy slots feature. This was something I took advantage of after playing the main game. 

I played with a $2 cost per spin and 50 auto spins. During this, I landed absolutely nothing, which is why I opted to test out the X-iter to see just how good the bonus rounds are. By pressing on the X-iter icon, you will load the game’s bonus options. You have Assassins Spins, Bonus Spins, Nitrofest, Big Blocks, and Bonus Hunt. I went in for the Bonus Free Spins at $200. I received eight free spins played at $2 per spin. I won a total of $64.40.

My lack of success is partly due to the game’s volatility. This is programmed at high, making it purposefully harder to land wins. The RTP is also low at a score of 94%. This is most definitely a game to be avoided if you have a limited budget. The maximum payout is 25,000 times what you wager. If you play to $100 per spin, this makes the jackpot a total of $2,500,000, and that’s what makes high-volatility games appealing. 

The game is good if you have the finances. In my experience of Gritty Kitty of Nitropolis, it was a lot of spinning and a lot of nothing happening. The game is riddled with features, but I experienced all but one of them: the Nitro Upgrade. I think the game will accumulate more success if more of the series drops from the developer at top rated online casinos. If they are each different, it can benefit each game, but should they all be exactly like Gritty Kitty of Nitropolis with a different name and artwork, then it might not be a battle that ELK wins. 

Successful series that do get it right include Kingdoms Rise: Shadow Queen, Age of the Gods: Wonder Warriors, and John Hunter and the Mayan Gods.