RIP City

RIP City Slot Review

A win lands roughly every five and a half spins here, which sounds generous until the paytable spoils it: five of the highest-paying regular symbol returns 20x the stake. RIP City deals in small change most of the time and keeps everything meaningful behind one mechanic. Hacksaw Gaming put the slot out in January 2023 on a 5x5 grid with 19 fixed paylines, a 96.22% return and a 12,500x ceiling. Ro$$ the cat and Maxx the mouse squabble at the edges of the screen while the reels decide nothing much. The RIP City demo runs the same maths as real play, so it costs nothing to see how rarely the good part arrives.

Theme, Graphics & Sound

Grey dominates. The back alley behind the grid is drawn in black, white and soot, then splashed with pink, yellow, blue and green wherever a symbol needs to stand out. Ro$$ lounges to the left, Maxx puffs away on the right holding a spare cigarette, and both come straight out of mid-century cartoon slapstick.

Hacksaw has leaned on this washed-out palette before, in Chaos Crew among others, so the look reads as house style rather than a one-off. A jazz piano loop carries the base game and stays out of the way. The animation does the entertaining, especially the moment the cat's jaw drops open across a reel.

RTP, Volatility & Hit Frequency

RTP on this page is 96.22%, and the studio rates volatility 3 out of 5. Hit frequency sits at 18.22%, one paid spin in every 5.48. Read those two figures together and the session shape becomes obvious: the reels stay busy, the wins stay tiny, and the stretch between natural bonus triggers is where a bankroll quietly disappears.

Sticking with the studio at a similar return brings you to Hand of Anubis, which sits two hundredths of a percent away on the same shelf.

Symbols & Payouts

Ten regular symbols split evenly between royals and premiums. The royals run 10 through A and top out at 10x the bet for five on a line. The premiums are a peeled banana, a skull with a candle on it, a pair of dice, a smiley face and an eight ball, and the best of them returns 20x.

Two wilds appear on the reels, both worth 25x for five in a row. The green one substitutes and nothing more. The Wild Cat is the reason to be here.

Run the arithmetic and the design becomes clear. A full line of the top premium pays 20x. Three maximum Wild Cats in the same win contribute 600x between them. Multiply one by the other and you are at 12,000x, a whisker under the published cap, from a single line. Nothing in the paytable gets you anywhere near that on its own, which is why the flat symbol values are not an oversight. They are the price of the multiplier ladder.

RIP City Bonus Features

Wild Cat

The Wild Cat lands as a single tile, then drops its jaw to the bottom of its reel whenever that expansion would complete at least one winning line. Every position it covers turns wild, and a reel holds one cat at a time. If the expansion swallows a green wild on the way down, that wild converts into a multiplier applied to the entire expanded cat: 2x through 10x, then 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, 100x or 200x. Several multipliers inside one win are added together before the win is paid, so three maximum cats make 600x rather than a number nobody could print.

Ro$$ Bonus

Three FS scatters in view hand over the Ro$$ round: 10 free spins with both wild types weighted to land more often than usual. Three scatters during the round add four spins, and it can be stretched several times. Five Wild Cats across the top row turn the whole grid wild, which is the prettiest thing the game does.

Maxx Bonus

Four scatters at once skips Ro$$ entirely and opens the Maxx Bonus, also 10 spins. Every reel that catches a Wild Cat here stays activated, and an activated reel is guaranteed a fresh Wild Cat on each remaining spin. Getting all five lit early is the route the 12,500x cap was designed around. Four scatters during a Ro$$ round promote you into Maxx as well.

FeatureSpins and Bonus Buy

Five entries sit in the buy menu. BonusHunt FeatureSpins costs 3x your stake per spin and makes a bonus five times likelier. Two guaranteed Wild Cats per spin costs 20x, three costs 50x. The Ro$$ Bonus can be bought outright at 110x, the Maxx Bonus at 200x. Cheap entries suit most bankrolls; the 200x purchase is a single decision rather than a plan.

How to Play

Stakes begin at $0.10 and reach $100 a spin from the panel under the grid. Wins pay left to right from reel one across the 19 fixed lines, three matching symbols minimum. Autoplay and quick spin are both available, and the game runs in a browser on desktop, tablet and phone without a download.

Free play is the sensible first step. Demo mode uses identical maths, which makes a couple of hundred spins a fair sample of the pace before the buy button starts looking reasonable, and 300 spins with no sign of the Ro$$ round is a normal enough outcome to be worth meeting on play money. The Tropicool 3 demo is a click away if you want a second reading on how a multiplier grid should feel.

Pros

• Hit frequency of 18.22% keeps the base game ticking over
• Multipliers reach 200x per wild and stack additively inside a win
• Five buy entries, from 3x the stake up to 200x
• Demo play carries the same return as real money

Cons

• Premium symbols pay 15x to 20x for five, so line wins alone go nowhere
• Natural bonus triggers are scarce, and long droughts are normal
• The greyscale look is drab by design and will not suit everyone

Our Take

Worth a session if you enjoy watching a mechanic assemble itself rather than waiting on a bonus round. The Wild Cat expansion is well built, the multiplier ladder gives every expanded cat real weight, and 12,500x is a serious ceiling for a slot rated medium. Skip it if you expect the base game to pay its own way, because 20x for five premiums is thin and the gaps between scatters are long. Spend a few hundred spins in demo first. If the cat and mouse routine leaves you cold, Wanted Dead or a Wild is the studio's harder swing and sits on the same shelf.