Skibblings

Skibblings Review

The Skibblings are fantasy goblins that live in dungeons deep beneath the surface, led by their beloved and feared Skibbling King. They are tired of being stomped by the heroes of the surface world and having their loot stolen, so the Skibblings decided to fight back. This is the premise of ELK Studios' latest slot release called Skibblings, and you get to meet a whole array of more or less bizarre characters in this game.

Skibblings slot plays out on a 5x4 grid with 178 ways to win, and you win by landing 3 to 5 matching symbols across at least one win way, starting from the leftmost reel. The red, fiery devil is the highest-value symbol, followed by skeleton, lizard, and mouse characters. These premium symbols pay 2.5x to 5x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, while the low-value artifact symbols award 0.5x to 1.25x your stake for the same.

Skibblings Slot - Reels Screen

Winning symbols are removed and replaced via the Avalanche mechanic, allowing for indefinite winning streaks. Between the reels are the Skibbling lanterns, and these light up randomly per spin to load a cannon with Skibblings per win that passes through them. Up to 10 Skibblings can be loaded from a single lantern, and with 5+ Skibblings loaded, the cannon blasts these onto the reels in the form of mystery symbols.

There are several other ways to load this cannon as well, and the Skibbling King can even help trigger the bonus round. The regular bonus round loads the cannon persistently until the climactic final spin blast, while the super bonus round offers a rain of skibblings per free spin. Skibblings is a high volatility slot game, scoring 7 out of 10 on ELK’s scale, and it comes with an RTP of 94% and a max win of 10,000x your stake.

Skibblings Features

There are plenty of features to cover, and we strongly suggest you take advantage of the Skibblings free play demo after reading about them. This will help make sense of it all, but for now, let’s dig in!

Avalanche Wins

Winning symbols are removed via the Avalanche mechanic, with existing and new symbols dropping down to fill the gaps. This process repeats as long as you keep forming new winning combinations, allowing for indefinite winning streaks from the same initial spin.

Skibbling Lanterns

Skibbling Lanterns are placed on chains between the reels, and a random selection of these lanterns is lit per spin. Winning combinations passing through lit Skibbling Lanterns add a certain amount of Skibblings (green goblins) to the cannon placed in front of the reels. The brightest-burning orange lantern adds 10 skibblings to the cannon, while the pink and green lanterns add 3 and 1 skibblings to the cannon, respectively.

Cannon Blast

If the Cannon is loaded with at least 5 skibblings, the Cannon Blast feature is triggered at the end of the spin or avalanche sequence. As the reels respin, all the skibblings in the cannon are blasted onto the grid. They can land on positions that do not contain sticky symbols like wilds, paladins, wizards, or scatters, and they turn the position they land on into a mystery symbol. If a skibbling lands on an existing mystery symbol, the multiplier is increased. When the reels stop, the mystery symbols reveal a random matching symbol or wilds. The multipliers boost any win they are part of.

Skibbling King

The Skibbling King can appear at random times to trigger the Skibbling Rain or Bonus Rain features. The Skibbling Rain feature adds Skibblings to the grid at the start of the spin, just like if they were blasted from the cannon. The Bonus Rain can only trigger in the base game, adding 2 to 5 scatter symbols to the grid. It can also add super scatters.

Paladin and Wizard Wild Symbols

The Paladin symbol (the snobbish guy with his nose in the air) is a wild symbol that collects all Skibblings from lit lanterns and adds them to the cannon, but only if this wild is part of a win. The Paladin Wild is then removed, together with adjacent paying symbols. The Wizard symbol (double chin dude) is also wild, and it lights all the unlit lanterns before exploding together with all paying symbols.

Skibblings Free Spins

The Bonus Round triggers from 3, 4, or 5 treasure chest scatter symbols in view, awarding 7, 9, or 11 free spins, respectively. If at least one of the triggering scatters is a super scatter, you trigger the Super Bonus Round instead. In the Super Bonus Round, each free spin guarantees the Skibbling Rain feature. In the regular bonus round, Skibblings collected in the cannon are persistent between free spins, but the cannon doesn’t blast until your winning streak ends on the final free spin. You win +1 extra free spin per scatter that lands, but scatters cannot land after the cannon blast.

Skibblings Slot - Free Spins

Skibblings Bonus Buy (not UK)

The X-iter menu is where you’ll find the bonus buy option, among other options, but only in eligible regions. Here’s an overview of what’s on offer in Skibblings slot:

• Bonus Hunt - pay 2.5x your stake to increase the bonus round hit rate by 4x.
• Mega Bonus Hunt - pay 5x your stake to increase the bonus round hit rate by 8x.
• King Spin - pay 25x your stake to get either Skibbling Rain or Bonus Rain (with the super bonus guaranteed if the bonus round triggers).
• Bonus Round - costs 100x your stake.
• Super Bonus Round - costs 250x your stake.

Theme & Graphics

The Skibblings slot game plunges you into a fantasy underground world, populated by green goblins. You can see their dwellings in the backdrop with their lit windows, and the dark cave is shrouded in a gloomy fog. The reels are framed by torch-lit stone pillars, with everything from fiery devils to lizard and mouse characters populating the reels. The relaxed soundtrack has an epic vibe, like something out of a Vikings TV series intro, and the cannon is prominently placed in front of the grid.

Skibblings Free Play

We get that reading about all the features can make it tempting to skip the rest of the review and go straight to the free Skibblings demo. However, we would still encourage you to read our verdict of the game, also, now that you’ve already come so far. Whether you agree with our conclusion or not is up to you, and do let us know in the comments field. Once you’re done, you can head to the top of this review page to find the Skibblings free play version and play as much as you like.

Pros and Cons of Skibblings

Our Verdict

My thoughts immediately went to games like Goblin Heist Powernudge and Evil Goblins when I first laid eyes on Skibblings, but kudos to ELK for, once again, taking on their wizard hats and conjuring up a unique world and story for Skibblings. It makes the experience all the more immersive, and there is plenty of innovation in the feature department as well.

One thing I didn’t quite get was the strange mix of characters on the reels. What are devils, undead skeletons, lizard people, and mean-looking mice doing in this game? I thought the idea was to pit heroic human explorers from the surface against the cave-dwelling skibblings, so these weird creatures populating the paytable made no sense to me. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter that much, but it’s still worth mentioning.

What I do love about Skibblings is the whole cannon feature, and how it takes center stage both in the base game and the bonus rounds. It’s great fun watching those goblins accumulate in the cannon, and squeezing enough of them in there can deliver solid payouts to boot. There are plenty of features to keep your winning streaks going in Skibblings, with the random Skibbling King coming out of the woodwork when you least expect it.

I also like that you can trigger the super bonus round organically, allowing players from all regions to enjoy the massive amount of skibling mystery symbols you get. The regular bonus round builds up to a climactic finish, and in that sense, the two features complement each other flawlessly. Overall, Skibblings is a fast-paced and charming game that feels like the start of what could turn into another successful series from ELK Studios.