Even though it’s a recent release from Microgaming, Pretty Kitty’s theme and design are not showing an attempt on their part to fight with the best titles that are launched these days. It’s a cat-themed game obviously, but one that will not give you a great first impression thanks to its rather average design. Pretty Kitty is giving you 243 ways to win, has 5 reels to spin each round, and it can pay up to $30,000. I enjoyed the stacked symbols that can appear on its reels, along with the scatters, wilds, and free spins that you can get along the way as well.
The complete betting range in Pretty Kitty is between $0.30 and $300. The game pretends to have 30 active lines, to make it easier to cover all the possible ways to win that it has. For each of those lines, you can select both the number of coins and their value. You can have between 1 and 5 coins for each line, while the denomination can be between $0.01 and $2. The line bet can get up to $10 this way.
For the theme of Pretty Kitty, Microgaming chose a variety of cats for its main paying symbols, but the other half of the paytable is occupied with gemstones. In the background, you get the equivalent of a piece of cloth colored in blue, which is obviously not particularly appealing or fun for this particular theme. As symbols, the choice was made to have five different cats as major symbols which pay more. They’re not small kitties though, but full-grown cats instead, most of them with bored or angry expressions on their faces. The game could’ve looked cuter if these cat images were handled differently. The feature symbols get images of cat collars with gemstones and game logos. The last five symbols are the ones that show you gemstones, colored in red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. They have different shapes as well, and they’re better than having poker cards, but I still don’t see the connection with the theme. If you look at the individual symbols, you can see the quality in their design, I’m not going to question that. As a whole though, I doubt you will love the look of the slot, though you will still be able to enjoy it if you really like cats.
One of the major talking points in Pretty Kitty would be the ability that its high-paying symbols have, to expand and take over multiple reels. The five cat symbols are going to come in stacked on reel 1, and if they cover that column’s three positions then all other symbols of the same type will expand on the other reels. While in free spins mode, the wilds are also expanded, along with the other symbols.
The white cat is the only one that appears stacked on all reels, the other four coming that way only on reel 1. If you check out the game logo symbol, you will find that it’s the one that you get the substitute ability from. You can use combinations of wilds and regular symbols to get paid. You can also win up to $1,200 in combinations that have just wild symbols in them. The wilds don’t get the option to act as replacements for the scattered Cat Collars, but they work just fine in combination with regular symbols.
A Cat Collar symbol is going to be a scatter, which may appear on the reels in absolutely any position, and if you get a minimum of two then you will see some kind of prize come your way. These rewards vary in value from 1x to 100x what you wagered that round. Should 3 or more Cat Collar symbols land on the reels, you will be given 15 spins for free, where the wild symbols are stacked on reel 1. You can also trigger the free spins again, while you’re playing through the initial 15 rounds that you got.
As it often happens, the big reward of the game will come via the scatter symbol here, which can apparently give away up to $30,000, as long as the wager was at $300. Regular combinations made out of wilds are next, paying up to $1,200. The regular payouts are lower because the symbols forming them can appear stacked and can expand on the reels, so you can get paid a lot of times for the same combo during a single spin. The game might have its low points graphics-wise, but its RTP is one of the highest that Microgaming offers. It’s at 97% from what we found out, which is an excellent number for a slot machine.
Pretty Kitty has its major advantages, in the way it plays and in its long-term average RTP. I’m not excited about its design, unfortunately.
Ethan Lim, a native of the Lion City, is Singapore’s rising star in the domain of online casino guide localization. He masterfully blends his intimate knowledge of local culture with international gaming standards to produce content that resonates deeply with Singaporeans.