Street Knockout

Street Knockout: Slot Overview

Hacksaw Gaming's brothers and sisters from the Rainbow Nation, South Africa, NowNow Gaming, have been getting their punching, kicking, and fighting on to cause a bit of a ruckus. The occasion for this ruckus is the game Street Knockout, a cascading cluster pays slot which likes to settle its differences physically rather than with a sternly worded email. Helping boost wins, like a horseshoe hidden in a boxing glove, are progressive multipliers that accumulate above each reel, a symbol destroying Golden Fist, and free spins where reel multipliers are persistent till the final bell.

The people of Street Knockout aren't getting all fighty just for lols, either. In the heart of this city, knockouts determine who rules the underground, attracting brawlers, gang leaders, and outcasts to try their luck by punching people out. This they do in a fenced-off back alley area, in the dead of night, in some unsavoury part of the city. Makes you wonder, while fighting is one way of clearly highlighting a winner and a loser, surely it's much better to peacefully cast votes to determine who rules who, instead of throwing actual jabs, not that democracy isn't without its flaws, either.

Two RTP models have been designed for Street Knockout, a 96.3% and a 94.34% version, while volatility has been rated 4 out of 5, making it medium-high. Symbols tumble into a 6x6 arena with the goal of connecting 5 or more matching symbols in vertical and/or horizontally adjacent positions in order to form a winning cluster. Alongside three optional bonus buys, players may choose a bet of 10 c to $/€100.

Street Knockout's eleven pay symbols are split into 9-A card ranks and five fighter symbols. Winning clusters made of 5 matching symbols award 0.1 to 1 times the bet, while the biggest clusters contain 13+ symbols and are worth 10 to 100 times the bet. The wild symbol substitutes for all paying symbols in the game. Winning pay symbols are removed from the screen, causing symbols to cascade down to fill blank spaces. New symbols are added at the top, and if a new winning cluster forms after a drop, the cascading feature triggers again.

Street Knockout: Slot Features

Street Knockout's one-two combo consists of cascades, knockout wilds, Golden Fists, a Power Bonus, and bonus buys.

Knockout Wilds

The knockout feature can trigger on any base game spin. When triggered, a random number of positions are highlighted. Following this, symbols drop onto the reels, and any fighter symbols that land on a highlighted position transform into wilds with a multiplier. If the highest paying symbol transforms into a wild, the possible multipliers are x5 to x500, while all other fighter symbols that transform into wilds award a multiplier of x1 to x10. Multipliers are collected at the top of the reels. If a winning combination occurs, the multipliers above the winning cluster are added together and applied to the win. Knockout wilds may also appear during cascades. If there is already a multiplier above the reels, new multipliers are added to it.

Golden Fist

During the knockout feature, one or more Golden Fist symbols may appear. After any wins, the Golden Fist symbol triggers one of two events. It may remove symbols in a cross on the matrix, where symbols in the same row and column as the Golden Fist are destroyed, causing new symbols to drop in, providing another chance to win. Scatters and wilds are not destroyed. Alternatively, the Golden Fist can remove all low pay symbols from the reels, causing a cascade.

Power Bonus

Landing 4, 5, or 6 scatters in the base game awards 6, 8, or 10 free spins, respectively. The Power Bonus has the same mechanics as the base game, except multipliers do not reset for the entire bonus session.

Bonus Buy

BonusHunt FeatureSpins may be activated from the bonus buy, costing 2x the bet to make each spin 3 times more likely to trigger a bonus game. Knockout FeatureSpins cost 50x, where each spin starts with reel multipliers of x1 to x100, and the knockout feature is guaranteed. Lastly, players may buy the Power Bonus for 100x their bet.

Street Knockout: Slot Verdict

Teaming up with a studio like Hacksaw Gaming has got to come with a lot of benefits, such as exposure, strong name association, and maybe even assistance in actually making games? On the other hand, being linked to a big name might also make it tougher to really stand out from the towering shadow it casts. Street Knockout puts up a decent fight, though, goes a few rounds, and pops a few good shots off. The last couple of NowNow Gaming slots we've reviewed, Shadow Treasure and 8-Bit Quest, haven't been bad lookers, and neither is Street Knockout. The wiggly woo metal soundtrack, the graphics, the 'fight' voice over, and the 'Street' in the title give the slot a video game effect some gamblers may enjoy.

The features have their moments too, and NowNow Gaming is definitely a fan of hitting winning combinations with multipliers in one form or another, as is its partner Hacksaw Gaming, famously. Shadow Treasure also had multipliers above reels, and 8-Bit Quest had an increasing global multiplier, for instance, though the system used here varies from those two slots. Street Knockout actually brought Hand of Anubis' Underworld feature to mind, with shades of Chaos Crew 2 thrown in for good measure.

It would appear then that Street Knockout finds itself amongst illustrious company, though it didn't come across as a slot which punches as hard as some of Hacksaw Gaming's heavyweights. It does have a payout cap of 10,000x that is winnable in the base game as well as in free spins, a feisty attitude and is able to pull off slick moves with its cluster, multiplier, cascade combo, though, meaning there's a good chance it'll grab the attention of fight-minded gamblers.