Stars of Orion Slot by ELK Studios

Hex Grid, Heavy Removal

Stars of Orion uses a 6x8 hexagonal grid where cluster wins need five or more identical symbols connected through hex adjacency. That's standard for this format. What's unusual is the removal logic: when a winning cluster explodes, ALL other symbols of the same value on the entire grid disappear too. Not just the winning ones. Every instance of that symbol vanishes.

This aggressive removal creates larger gaps and more dramatic refills than standard cascading slots. A single 5-cluster win from symbol 3 might remove another 8 scattered symbol 3s elsewhere on the board, creating a completely reshuffled grid for the next evaluation.

The Magic Meter

A progress meter on the right side of the screen tracks cumulative wins. Each winning cluster advances it. The meter awards two types of rewards in sequence: Win Multipliers and Magic Features.

Win Multipliers apply immediately to all payouts. The meter keeps climbing with each win chain, and the multiplier caps at 64x. That's an unusually high ceiling for a built-in multiplier - most slots stop at 10x or 15x. Reaching 64x requires a long, sustained winning streak within a single round, but the game's 36.6% hit frequency gives it a realistic shot during bonus rounds.

Magic Features are stored until the current win chain ends. When no more clusters form, a saved feature fires, dropping wilds in constellation patterns that restart the cascade. The patterns escalate: Orion's Belt drops 3 wilds, Club drops 6, Shield drops 8, and the full Orion constellation drops 13. Thirteen wilds on a 48-position grid covers more than a quarter of all cells.

Super Symbols and Super Clusters

Blue-framed symbols act as Super Symbols. When one lands in a winning cluster, its super status spreads through the cluster and into any adjacent winning clusters, merging everything into a Super Cluster. Then all symbols in that merged cluster upgrade to the highest-value symbol present.

So a cluster containing symbols 3, 5, and 0 merges into one massive cluster - all replaced by symbol 0, the premium. The combined cluster size determines the payout. A 12-symbol Super Cluster of symbol 0 pays 2,500 coins per 100-coin bet. Under a 64x multiplier, that single cluster produces 160,000 coins, or 1,600x on a standard bet.

Bonus and the Numbers

Three bonus scatter symbols trigger 10 free drops. Magic Meter progress persists between all drops - the multiplier and stored features carry over. Super Bonus triggers when all three scatters are red-framed Super Bonus symbols, increasing the Super Symbol appearance rate for all 10 drops.

RTP sits at 95.0%, landing between ELK's old 96% era and their current 94% standard. Hit frequency is 36.6% - roughly one in three spins connects. That frequency keeps the Magic Meter moving, even though most individual wins are small. The multiplier buildup across a chain of modest hits is where the game generates its larger payouts. Max win caps at 10,000x.

X-iter options include Guaranteed Win at 5x (every round produces at least one cluster), Super Symbols at 10x (more blue frames), Symbol Swap at 50x (three free swap features), and bonus buys at 100x and 500x.