IO Slot Review

Released in June 2020, this game can be played at online casinos such as ComeOn!, LeoVegas or Unibet.

Theme and general information

Io is the latest slot from ELK Studios and it sure reminds us of their game Cygnus, which shares a lot of similarities with this newest game.

Io, of course, is one of Jupiter’s many moons and it is the gaseous planet we’re looking at right outside the window of the spaceship we are on. According to ELK, this is actually a casino ship, which you can just make out in the bottom left-hand corner, where a casino table game is visible. Whilst looking futuristic and very well done, the theme is therefore on the lighter side of things.

We recommend you set the slot to quickspin, though, as the tumbles of the symbols can otherwise be tediously slow.

The general setup is the same as in Cygnus. We get six columns of symbols all four rows high. But as before, the symbols don’t sit flush side by side, but rather in a sort of intersecting manner, which allows the Gravity mechanic to come into play. As we already know from Cygnus and other games, the Avalanche feature works by removing all symbols in a winning combo with the remaining symbols falling into those spaces and new symbols falling in from above.

Here the Gravity mechanic means that the symbols tumble either left or right, depending on where gravity takes them. It’s quite similar to the Avalanche mechanic but unique to ELK Studios.

On the reel symbols we find generic playing card symbols from J to A as well as classic symbols such as stars, clovers, diamonds and 7s. The latter are the most valuable ones with 5x our stake for 6 of its kind.

You can play this game from 0.20 to 100.00 per spin.

Modifiers and expanding reels

There are several special symbols on the reels, which keep gameplay even in the base game interesting. There are two wilds in the game.

The Charged Wild starts out with 4 lives and remains in the game area for an entire reaction sequence. Each time it becomes part of a winning combo, it loses a life. Once all 4 lives are used up, it vanishes off the reels.

The Wild Forge is something we’ve seen in the Gold series slots before. When it lands on the reels, it will fill the empty space beneath it with a multiplier wild. Whenever the Wild Forge is used, the multiplier climbs by 1x and there’s no limit to how high it can go. If the Wild Forge ends up falling to the bottom of the grid, it will become a multiplier wild as well.

There’s also a Laser symbol that triggers the Laser Feature. When it lands, it destroys all regular symbols in its path to make room for new symbols falling down. When two Laser symbols intersect, the symbols in their path become wild.

On top of all that, each consecutive win expands the reels by 1 row. We can get a maximum of 8 rows with 262,144 ways to win.

Free Drops with a maxed-out grid

We need at least three bonus symbols to trigger the Free Drops. That will give us 7 Free Drops. More bonus symbols will give us more Free Drops, up to a maximum of 15 for 6 bonus scatters.

During the Free Drops, the full grid with 8 rows is played and all special symbols are also in play. Moreover, if they have not been used up to their full capacity, they fall to the bottom of the screen after the end of an avalanche win.

Additionally, it is possible to re-trigger the free drop feature.

Verdict: A great-looking slot with familiar features and good potential

The theoretical RTP (Return to Player) of Io is 96%, which is solid average. We get a hit frequency of nearly 25% in this game, which is great, though the volatility is quite high at 8/10. Still, with a maximum potential of 5,000x our stake, we have nothing to complain about here, though realistically you’re more likely to hit between 200x and 1,000x your stake if you manage a good run.

Overall, Io is a good-looking slot with many familiar features, solid gameplay and decent potential. There is nothing not to like here, even though ELK isn’t reinventing the wheel with this one. The only thing that we cannot recommend highly enough is the setting to quickspin mode, as it truly helps move things along at a good pace.