The Poltava game can be found at casinos offering Elk Studios software. Elk Studios are a small but quickly growing casino software developer primarily focusing on the mobile market. At the present time they only offer slots games. Players should be aware that this software provider includes ‘betting strategies’ as an automated feature. These should be avoided. They offer no mathematical gain to the player and increase the risk of large losses in comparison to your bankroll. As a standard Elk Studios do publish the RTP/House Edge information for their slots games within their game paytable. As such we can say that the House Edge of Poltava is 3.6%.
Poltava is made up of 5 reels, each one 4 symbols high. There are no paylines, instead the game works using way lines, of which there are 40 in total.
Special Symbols
Wild – The “Poltava Wild” symbol substitutes for all symbols other than the “Lion”.
Bonus - The “Lion” is the Bonus symbol.
Bonus Features
The Marching Reels – This feature is triggered when you will a reel with identical combat symbols, not including Wilds. These include “Cavalry”, “Artillery” and “Infantry”. This results in a re-spin, during which reinforcements are added to the left of the combat reel on rows 2 and 3, filling all subsequent spaces. All symbols will then move one space to the right, with another re-spin given if you can land another combat symbol on the reels to the right of your formation. If no additional combat symbols join your formation, or if the front of your formation reaches reel 5 the feature will end.
Flames of War – This feature is triggered if you can land 3 or more “Lion” symbols in any position on the reels. Lion symbols will only appear on reels 2,3, and 4 until the “Flames of War” feature is triggered when they can appear on any reel. The “Lion” symbols will stick in place and you will be awarded a free spin for every “Lion” symbol used to trigger the feature. You will then gain an additional spin for every new “Lion” symbol that is added to the reels, which will also stick in place fir the remainder of the free spins.
Conclusion
“Poltava” is a very interesting slots game, that uses a theme you’re almost guaranteed to never see used anywhere else. The “Battle of Poltava” is a major moment in both Swedish and Russian history, signalling the decline of the Swedish Empire as a major force in Europe and cementing Russia, with “Peter the Great” at the helm, as the major power in North Eastern Europe at the time. The battle also holds significance for Ukrainians, as Poltava is in the Ukraine and many Ukrainians fought with the Swedes, attempting to quash the power of Tsarist Russian within its borders. You are tasked with changing the tides of history and altering the outcome of the war. You can do so with a few bonus features that offer some engaging gameplay, all set inside a detailed grid with equally detailed symbols. The colour scheme is a little on the drab side, but does essentially fit in with colours of the war. However, despite a unique theme, it’s always going to be hard to recommend a game with built in betting strategies. The “Advanced Betting Strategies” are sold as an advantageous game feature, when these strategies offer the player no improvement over flat betting. The reality is that if you increase your bet, you’re more likely to lose money than you are to make any. This is poor practice, and it drags everything positive about the game down. We would be highly critical of any website offering bogus betting strategies so a game developer doing this is even more problematic for us. If this was not a feature in the game I would be scoring this game much higher than I have done.