Man vs Gator Slot Review

Okay, so a month back, this ELK Studios game popped up on our radar. When we first read about it, we made a mental note to review it. With a name like Man vs Gator, we just had to give it a look, as the title intrigued us. Before sitting down to analyze this slot, we read up on what ELK has been up to recently, and we saw the news that it expanded its presence in Spain in July 2024, the same month it released Man vs Gator, and had stuck to churning out two games per month. In July, aside from this product, ELK also set loose the fifth entry in the massively popular Nitropolis series. In May, it debuted a Pug Thugs of Nitropolis slot, but that is an addition to a spin-off Nitropolis franchise.

Concerning Man vs Gator, this title is doing excellently in the first two weeks following its debut, ranking in the top fifty standings in the UK, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Malta, and Spain. Hence, it is our duty to scan it for you and inform you if this spinner lives up to the intrigue its name generates.

Theme & Design

Gator, short for alligator, is a U-shared snout reptile primarily living in eastern China and the southeastern waters of the US. A crocodile, on the other hand, has a V-shaped snout and can get found in both saltwater and freshwater habitats. It lives in Africa, Australia, and the Americas. As far as the representation of these reptiles on digital reels goes, it is not negligible. Going by our short research into this topic, we discovered that around one hundred and seventy online gambling games feature these creatures as a symbol or in some way implement them in their gameplay. However, few have them as their chief motif. From those that do, the most popular are BGaming’s Wild Chicago, Gator Gold GigaBlox by Yggdrasil, and Crocodile Blitz Extreme by Playtech Origins. In truth, the offer of gator/croco slots disappointed us, and we are sure that this one from ELK Studios will stand tall as the most-played one from this sub-genre for a while.

Now, onto its presentation, which we quite enjoyed. The game begins with a comic book-style intro that depicts the start of the conflict between man and beast that is about to occur on digital reels in your session in this game. We assume the setting here is Florida, and we should add that this spinner essentially also has a boxing theme, as the gator has boxing gloves on, one is a token, and you get a bell symbol and sound in Man vs Gator. The gameplay in this spinner is accompanied by a beach-type tune that we found relaxing, and we like the sunset backdrop and the colorful grid illustrations.

You will find the spin functions right of the stage-framed reel layout here, and the X-iter options and your stake selector left of it. We should also add that we like how the reels spin in Man vs Gator, their movement animations, and corresponding paper-like sound effects. Not to mention, we love the fight animations. Chair shots – yes!

Specs & Gameplay

Man vs Gator is a reel-spinning game with five reels and five rows. It has two hundred and fifty-nine paylines, an RTP of 94%, a hit frequency of 24, a high variance math model, and bet sizes that begin at $0.20, going up to a top game wager of $100 per spin. The most you can get as a prize in this ELK Studios’ creation is a reward that is ten thousand times your stake. Given the max bet of $100, this is a potentially hefty sum for those with deep pockets who like to bet big.

Payouts in Man vs Gator occur when three to five identical symbols hit adjacent reels on the same spin on a defined betway. The low-pay ones are three royals, producing prizes from x0.25 to x.0.35 for five matching ones hitting in a round on a betway. The premiums in this slot are a blue and red gator, yielding wins of x1 for five blue ones and x5 for five red punk gators stopping in view.  Gas can and chain-wrapped glove premiums, delivering max prizes of x0.6 and x0.5, respectively, are also in play.

The bells are the bonus symbols, and the two main characters are wilds. More on them below.

Bonus Features

The man and gator two-position-high wilds are nudging ones, the first going up, the latter down, granting respins until they move off-screen. You also get a combined five-symbol high wild with two multiplier values, one for the gator, the other for the man who fights it out, and whoever wins their value gets chosen as the applying one. There is also a combo nudge, where each nudge of an on-screen wild upgrades the values of their character in the Man vs Gator wild. That symbol activates a respin where all the Man vs Gator tokens are sticky.

Landing three or more bells gives you access to the free spin round, which is re-triggerable. Four bells grant you a Super Bonus, where the Man vs Bonus wilds appear on the first spin, and getting five provides two of these tokens. The X-iter button provides five feature buy options, with the most expensive being x500 for bonus round activation via five triggering bell symbols.

GOSU Verdict

We love Man vs Gator. It is not something that blew our socks off, but we would call this one of the better games we have played in recent months. Dueling symbol spinners are usually enjoyable, but the presentation of this one put it over the top for us. The RTP is lower than expected, but the max win is higher than we would have guessed, and we are sure that it will serve as an enticing factor for many to choose this ELK title. Again, we like the wilds in this game, and we quite fancied its visuals, so on the strength of these aspects, we shall recommend Man vs Gator to you.

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