Hit It Hard

Let’s venture back to the 90s in the Hit It Hard slot from ELK Studios. Now ELK are pretty famous for their themed games like the Crusader slot and Wild Toro. Forget about that, as this game has gone all tradional on us!

Grab your Global Hypercolor T-shirts and your CD Walkmans: it’s time to get fruity.

The Basics

Hit It Hard is the sixth slot in the ELK Classic Series and comes with board-game inspired bonus trail with 23 (YES, that’s right I said ‘23’) bonus games for you to wrestle with. Now, if that doesn’t get you hot under the tux collar, nothing will. The first thing I thought of when I heard the name was the Punk Rocker slot machine but it turns out that this is more nineties than seventies.

The Graphics

As ELK Studios are taking things back to the old school you can expect a whole load of neon to fill your screen. The reels spin inside a 3D fruit machine on a background of bright blue, purple, and pink. It’s bit like a mid-90s rave my dear chums – but minus the whistles and glow sticks. They love  a bright game ELK – give the Micro Knights slot a spin if you don´t believe me.

Take a peek at the top of the reels and you’ll be treated to a big board game – this is your bonus trail. But we’ll cover that later on… Meanwhile, the soundtrack to accompany your spins is a rather catchy piano piece. All in all, another good-looking game from Elk Studios.

Hit it Hard Slot Game Play

The Hit It Hard slot has 3 reels, 3 rows and 5 fixed pay-lines and closely resembles an old-fashioned fruit machine. Bets start at 0.20 to go up to 100 per spin in pound, euros or dollars.

Your neon fruit symbols on the reels are made up of red 7s, blue 7s, green 7s, single, double and triple bars plus juicy melons, luscious lemons and tasty cherries as your lower value icons. These fruity morsels will pay out 1.5x, 1x and 0.5x respectively.

Simply add some Grey Goose for a thoroughly delicious cocktail…

Your Wild symbol in this slot will land on reel 3 only. But it does come with a 2x, 3x, 4x or 5x multiplier to make up for it. Meanwhile, the dice symbol will act as the Scatter and sets off the Bonus Feature.

Keep your eyes peeled for it on the middle reel – as not only will it trigger the crazy lucrative bonus, but it will apply a 10x multiplier on to your wins.

They’re a ruddy good bunch those ELKs!

The Bonuses

Roll the Dice Bonus
If you land the dice icon on the middle reel – you’ll trigger off the bonus game. Make no mistake my fine compadres – you’ve never seen a bonus quite like this one before. The feature is organised like a board game that’s jampacked with multiplier wilds, stacked wilds, re-spins and pachinko-type mini-games.

And don’t forget slot lovers, there’s 23 of them…

Best of all, as long as you win in each mini game, you’ll automatically level up and the enter the next one. In this way the bonus game just keeps on going, giving you more and more wins!

Lucky Ballz
This is a mini-pachinko that launches 3 balls onto a board. You need to hit one of several multipliers (of up to x100) on said board to win and progress to the next round. You’ve got 4 attempts to score.

Super Ballz
The Superballz mini feature is exactly the same as Lucky Ballz, although this time you’ve got an unlimited number of tries. The feature is over when you land the same multiplier twice – and the board features multipliers from x2 all the way up to x100 once again. You’re also guaranteed to win in this game, so it’s a given that you’ll move upwards and onwards to next round!

Stacked Wilds
It’s 3 Free Spins for you, but on the first spin reel 3 will be stacked with Wilds. On the second reel 2 will be stacked and on the final spin reels 2 and 3 will be fully stacked with Wilds. Well, you can’t say fairer than that, now can you?

Wild Spins
In this game, you’ll get 10 spins with a Wild on reel 3 every time and the multiplier amount can vary on each spin.

Quantum Leap
Hit this game my fine friends and you can expect to zoom across the board much faster than you would have normally done – getting you closer to that all-important final feature.

Power Run
This bonus game is a lucrative little chunk of love. You will move 6 spaces ahead on the bonus board and you will play every bonus that you pass along your way.

Break the Bank
This is the feature to end all feature – and to trigger it, you’ll need to collect 2 Bronze Keys. Make it around the bonus board twice and then land on the vault – now you’ll set off the bonus and win 250,000 coins. Thus, breaking the bank…

Wild Respins
This base game bonus gives you a second chance at winning. When a Wild icons lands on reel 3, you’ll be awarded multiplied win, or (on a no-win spin), the 3rd reel will lock and you’ll be given a re-spin.

Betting Strategies

If you’re not familiar with Elk Studios betting strategies, here’s a recap: these special strategies allow gamblers to choose between 4 different ways to wager. When different conditions are met – your bet size changes… Simple!

Jumper: After a win the bet level will increase by x1, up to 4 levels above the original bet (that means x10). After a losing spin the bet level will reset. So for example if your original bet is €0.15 per spin, in case of 4 consecutive wins the bet will go to €0.30, €0.60, €0.90, up to €1.50

Booster: This is the opposite of Jumper. The bet level will increase by x1 after each loosing spin, up to 4 levels. After a winning spin the bet level will reset.

Leveller: The bet level will increase by x2 after 5 consecutive losing spins. It can happen twice. A winning round will reset to basic level.

The Monkey Verdict

Hit It Hard slot this is another fine addition to ELK’s stable of games, and in my humble opinion, it’s one of the best yet. The bonus trail can be very lucrative when is gets going – and who can turn down the opportunity to Break the Bank?!

5 out of 5 bananas

I love the way that ELK have added a modern twist to the traditional fruity. All of those bonuses are literally the cherries on the top of this excellent game. It´s a big, opposable thumbs-up from me!