J-POP is an online slot from ELK Studios that was released in October 2023. The video slot follows the inhabitants of Jellon who’ve used Porta-loos as entry points to Earth and have collected items of importance to use in their rituals.
The J-POP slot is set on what looks like a stage, and its symbols include disks, tapes, as well as red, yellow, purple, and blue Jellons as well as corresponding sweets and playing card icons.
J-POP Slot Basics
The J-POP slot uses a 6×4 grid layout with 4,096 paylines that can be expanded to 262,144 paylines. It requires a bet of between £0.20 and £100 per spin, and it offers you a chance to win up to 25,000x your bet, which is huge. To make wins, you’ll need to land three or more identical icons on a single spin and payline.
The J-POP slot’s highest-paying icon is the red Jellon, which pays 100x for landing three times, 150x for landing four times, 250x for landing five times, and a maximum of 500x for landing six times. After this, the yellow Jellon pays 300x, the purple Jellon pays 150x, and the blue Jellon pays 100x. Meanwhile, the red sweet pays 50x, the yellow candy pays 40x, the purple sweet pays 30x, and the blue sweet pays 25x. Finally, the playing card icons all pay 20x each.
J-POP Slot RTP And Volatility
The J-POP slot comes with a return to player (RTP) rate of 94%, which is below the average for most video slots. The RTP tells you how much of all wagered funds are going to be returned to players over a long period of time and numerous users. The game also has high volatility, which means the wins you make while playing are going to be larger in size and paid infrequently.
Special Features
The J-POP slot comes with numerous special features, including oversized symbols. Wild and paying symbols can appear in 1×1 standard sizes, 2×2 super sizes, 3×3 mega sizes, and 4×4 epic sizes. All big symbols are counted as consisting of the number of 1×1 instances it covers.
Empty spaces occurring below large symbols are filled with 1×1-sized symbols of the same type as the big symbols, except walking wild icons.
The game starts with a symbol drop, where all wins in the current symbol drop are collected. All winning symbols explode except for walking wild icons. The remaining symbols fall to fill in haps, and an additional row of symbols is added to the top of the playing grid. New symbols fall to fill in empty positions, and these winning reactions continue until there are no more wins.
The game comes with walking wild symbols that substitute for all symbols to help make wins. Walking wild icons are sticky and come with an increasing multiplier. When they contribute to a winning combination, the walking wild walks one step to any adjacent positions and increases its multiplier by 1x(+1). The wild icon temporarily adopts the size of any symbol it walks onto.
There are grid flip symbols, which trigger columns one and six, two and five, and three and four to switch positions on the grid. It then becomes a wild icon to boost your winning potential.
Big drop symbols can appear on the reels, triggering a drop of big symbols that crush 1×1 icons before it transforms into a wild icon. The big drop symbol only triggers its feature when there are no winning combinations on the reels. If both the grid flip and big drop icons land on the reels, the grid flip feature triggers first.
Wild box symbols can appear, adding a random number of wild icons on the grid. Meanwhile, landing three or more bonus icons triggers the bonus game, where walking wild icons are persistent. Three bonus icons award 10 spins, four icons award 12 spins, five icons award 15 spins, and six icons award 20 spins.
The free drops bonus game begins with the safety level set to four rows. Landing winning combinations increases the number of rows up to eight with a maximum of 262,144 paylines. You can re-trigger the bonus game by landing three or more bonus icons.
Games Similar To J-POP Slot
There are several games similar to the J-POP slot, all of which are themed around sweets and monsters. One game worth trying is Sweet Alchemy by Play’n GO, which uses a 5×5 grid layout with a cluster pays mechanic and an RTP of 96.50%. Icons here include candies of different shapes and colours, and the game comes with features like cascading reactions, wild icons, a rush meter, destroyable icons, and a free spins mode.
Another game worth trying is So Many Monsters by Games Global, formerly Microgaming. The slot uses a 5×3 grid layout with 25 paylines and an RTP of 96.01%. Icons here include red, yellow, green, purple, and blue monsters, as well as eyeballs and the usual playing card symbols. Its special features include wild icons, scatter symbols, splitting symbols, and a free spins mode.
J-POP Slot Summary
One of the reasons ELK Studios games are so popular is the studio’s focus on implementing unique themes. The J-POP slot does that and adds colourful and bright symbols as well as plenty of fun features to keep you hooked. There’s the free spins mode, as well as wild icons, grid flips, big drops, and so much more. All of this combines to create a fun game that offers lots of winning potential.
We believe that the J-POP slot is a great casino game that’s best suited for experienced slot players and high-rollers due to the complicated features and the volatility and RTP rates. Casual players can give the slot a try if they feel confident enough, but we suggest that all new users try the other games we’ve mentioned in this review.
