Chi Slot Review

Chi is a video slot from ELK Studios with 3 reels and 27 paylines that pay both ways. Released in May 2019, you can play this game at online casinos such as Casumo, Mr Green or Guts.

Theme and basic information

We get a mythical Asian inspired theme with Chi. Two foxes are the main characters here: Chi and Mow. They’re quite adorable and play a big role throughout the game. The setting is stunning in a mountainous landscape where it seems to be spring all the time. It’s very pretty and the background music adds nicely to the theme.

The reel set is a gigantic prayer roll as you might find them in Tibet or elsewhere. It’s very well done and quite literally gives this reel set a completely unique spin, because the reels are vertical in this came, spinning horizontally. All paylines are therefore vertical, so you will have to see the symbols line up from top to bottom or bottom to top as they pay both ways.

It takes a little getting used to at first as it screws with the perspective we’re used to. But it goes so well with the theme that you can’t imagine it working any differently after a while.

Two additional prayer wheels spin on the left and right of the main set, bringing Chi and Mow into action when they align properly.

The lotus flower is the highest value symbol, paying out 10x for our bet 5 on a payline. The red lantern is worth 6x our bet for such a win. The yellow lantern is worth 5x our bet and the green jade stones are worth 3x our bet for 5 of a kind.

You can play this game from 0.20 to 20.00.

Chi and Mow bring random wilds and multipliers

The main actors in the base game are the two little foxes. Chi appears on the left-hand side when the symbol aligns properly on his little prayer wheel. When that happens, he’ll manifest and leave between 1 and 6 wilds randomly all over the reels. Big wins are possible here.

Mow shows up in a similar fashion on the right-hand side. He awards a random multiplier of 2x to 5x on your next spin.

Stairway to Fortune and free spin bonus

Free spins are triggered with 3, 4 or 5 scatters, which will give you 10, 15 or 20 free spins. During the feature, Chi and Mow can also randomly show up. Chi’s wilds will now stay sticky on the reels and Mow gives you a 2x multiplier, which can climb by 1x with every additional hit. It can go up to 5x.

Free spins can be retriggered multiple times.

The Stairway to Fortune is the second bonus game in this slot. It’s triggered when you get three bonus scatters (the Ying and Yang symbol) anywhere on the reels.

Chi will now randomly pick a number between 1 and 6, whilst Mow will climb the stairway from multiplier to multiplier. You want him to climb as high as possible, but if the ‘collect’ appears above Chi, your winnings are multiplied with the multiplier Mow last stopped on and the feature ends.

At the end of the stairway, if you get that far, awaits another set of prayer wheels with five reels. Each one will spin once, and the multipliers combine to determine the final multiplier that will be applied to your win. This feature can also be triggered during the free spins. The maximum multiplier you can get here is 12,500, which is absolutely massive.

Conclusion: Beautiful slot with interesting features and high volatility

The theoretical RTP (Return to Player) of Chi is 96%, which is firmly average these days but still pretty decent. Chi is, however, a very volatile slot and you absolutely need to budget accordingly. It takes a long time to trigger the free spins and longer to see the Stairway of Fortune once. Chi and Mow are also making only rare appearances in the game, though they do bring the best wins when they show up.

The free spins can be disappointing unless you manage to retrigger them. In the Stairway to Fortune we’ve made 40x to 100x our bet, which is enough to make us happy most days. But in this game, you kind of want a little more because the dry spells in between will really swallow your funds. Chi is a beautiful game that has some unique and interesting features. Whether you will love it or hate it really depends on the wins you manage to score within the first 200 spins.