Cash Elevator review
Cash Elevator was released on 20 May 2021 by Pragmatic Play together with Reel Kingdom. The layout is a classic 3×5 grid with 20 lines, but the game is built like a lift in an old hotel. It travels through thirteen floors and a basement, and with every floor the cheapest symbols drop off the reels. Two main features sit at the ends of the route: Hold and Spin waits at the top, and in the middle you can catch free spins in which two ghostly lovers walk towards each other.
A gloomy hotel, two ravens and a clock instead of a counter
The picture is done in old brass and green glass. Two ravens perch on the stair rails, a dial above the reels points to the current floor, and a small icon in the top left corner shows a symbol. On the third floor it holds a jack, which is the cheapest symbol of that level. The studio’s press release keeps the story simple: reunite two lovers in a creepy hotel. The heroes are a lady in a purple dress and a pale bellboy.
The regular symbols follow the theme: a rotary phone, a key, a vintage car, a stack of suitcases, a pocket watch, a black cat against the moon and a building with the game’s logo. The cards from nine to ace are drawn as gilded letters. The game starts on the third floor, as the digit 3 on the dial confirms.
What the cat, the watch and the gilded cards pay
Wins are counted from left to right on adjacent reels, starting at the leftmost one. Each line pays only its highest combination. The values come from the rules screen, which runs to nine information pages, and are given as multiples of the total bet.
| Symbol | 5 of a kind | 4 of a kind | 3 of a kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Building with logo | 50 | 15 | 2.5 |
| Black cat | 30 | 7.5 | 1.25 |
| Pocket watch | 25 | 5 | 1 |
| Phone, key, car, suitcases | 5 | 1 | 0.4 |
| Ace, king, queen, jack | 3 | 0.75 | 0.3 |
| Ten and nine | 2.25 | 0.5 | 0.2 |
By the standards of the genre the top of the table is modest, since even five buildings on a line pay 50 bets. The game runs on different logic, though. As the lift climbs, the bottom rows of the table vanish from the reels and only pricey symbols stay in play.
What stays on the reels at each floor
On the first floor every paying symbol is present, and the cheapest is the nine. From the second floor on, each level removes one more of the cheapest symbols from the strips: the ten becomes the cheapest on floor 2, the jack on floor 3, then the queen, king and ace up to floor 6, the suitcases, car, key and phone on floors 7 to 10, the pocket watch on floor 11 and the cat on floor 12. That builds a ladder of twelve steps, and on the twelfth floor only the building and the cat remain.
The character of the game shifts with the floor. On the lower floors the board is full of small stuff and most combinations barely repay the stake. By the tenth floor there is not a single card letter left and any three of a kind pays at least 0.4 bets. On the twelfth only two paying symbols remain, so every combination is expensive, and the amount depends on whether it is the cat or the building.
How the lift travels up and down
The floor changes in two ways. The first is tied to wins. Whenever a combination that includes the cheapest symbol of the current floor is paid, the game rises one floor. On the third floor, for example, any line of jacks lifts it. Without arrows, the climb from the third floor to the thirteenth takes ten such wins, and from the first floor, where a reset sends you, it takes twelve.
The second way involves arrows, which land only on the third reel. An up arrow moves the game 1, 2, 3 or even 12 floors higher, and a down arrow moves it 1, 2 or 3 lower. From the first floor an arrow of 12 lands exactly on the thirteenth, and Hold and Spin starts without a single win on the way. If the lift drops below the first floor, the basement kicks in and the game jumps to a random floor between the first and the twelfth. A fall downwards therefore does not wipe out progress but sends you back up to a random point.
Each bet level keeps its own floor
The current floor is saved for every bet level. Go back to a stake you used before and you land on the floor where you stopped. Choose a level you have never played and the game resets to the first floor.
Two conclusions follow. Changing the stake in the middle of a climb is costly if the new stake has not been used, because you lose the floor you built. And you can keep a separate lift on every level, like separate save slots. The demo behaves the same way.
Dead Lovers: how the free round begins
Wilds exist only in the bonus. The base game runs without them, and the two figures of the lovers appear only when a full 1×3 symbol lands on the second or fourth reel. Before the start you choose one of three ravens and receive from 6 to 12 spins.
If a tall Wild lands on both the second and fourth reels at once, the pick has a wider range: from 12 to 24 spins. Before the round the game moves you to a random floor from the first to the twelfth, and afterwards returns you to the one you were on. Special reels are used, but the rules do not reveal how they are built.
How the lovers walk towards each other
At the start of the bonus full 1×3 Wilds stand on the first and fifth reels: the lady and the bellboy. They substitute for every symbol except arrows and money coins. After each spin with a win that includes the cheapest symbol of the current floor, both Wilds shift one reel towards each other: first to reels 2 and 4, then onto reel 3, where they merge into one and award +5 spins. The next qualifying wins part them again to reels 2 and 4, then back to 1 and 5, and the walk starts over.
The rules say outright that the cycle can repeat indefinitely until all spins are played. In theory the bonus stretches, and +5 spins are earned each time the lovers meet in the centre. Each meeting takes at least two qualifying wins, because the Wilds must pass two steps of approach.
This works only while wins pass through the cheapest symbol of the current floor, so the random floor the game gives you at the start of the bonus affects the whole round. It decides which symbol moves the lovers, and that detail depends neither on the bet nor on your choice of raven.
The thirteenth floor and Hold and Spin
This bonus starts every time the game reaches floor 13, no matter how: a climb of one floor, an arrow or its jump of 12. Before the start you choose from three options again and receive 3 to 11 starting money symbols scattered at random.
The round begins with four respins. Every symbol that lands stays put, and each time at least one new one lands the respin counter goes back to four. The round lasts until the respins run out or the fifteen-cell grid is full. Then all values are added, multipliers are applied and the game pays the total. After the round the lift heads to a random floor from 1 to 12.
Three kinds of money on the thirteenth floor
What sets this round apart from an ordinary hold and win feature is that money symbols come in three types.
- Coins with a random amount from a preset set, chosen anew at every respin.
- A multiplier symbol of 2x, 3x, 5x or 10x, applied to the whole round total rather than to one coin.
- A bundle of banknotes with a fixed amount that depends on the floor where the round is played.
When multipliers land together they multiply each other. On paper, a 3x and a 5x become 15x on the entire pile of coins. That is how the round reaches large values, while the random starting floor decides the price of the banknotes.
Two bonuses side by side
| Parameter | Dead Lovers | Hold and Spin |
|---|---|---|
| How it starts | 1×3 Wild on reel 2 or 4 | Arrival on floor 13 by any route |
| Choice before the start | One of three ravens: number of spins | One of three options: 3-11 coins |
| How the round grows | The lovers meet, +5 spins | A new coin resets respins to 4 |
| Where it is played | On a random floor 1-12 | On a random floor 1-12 for banknote value |
| How it ends | The spins run out | The respins run out or the grid is full |
Both features send the lift back to floors 1-12, but differently: the free spins return you to where you were before the bonus, while Hold and Spin sends you to a random floor. The height you built survives only after Dead Lovers.
The 20,000x cap and one chance in 1,990,248
A single round cannot pay more than 20,000 bets. As soon as any feature piles up that much, the round is cut off, the prize is credited and unplayed spins disappear. The game-data line in the demo puts the odds of this outcome at 1 in 1,990,248.
The bet ladder runs from 0.01 to 12.00 per line across twenty lines, which gives a total bet from 0.20 to 240. There is no bonus buy in this game, so every feature arrives only through spins.
The volatility dispute: press release against badge
Here two official sources disagree. The studio’s press release calls the game a high volatility hit, while the rules screen of the game itself shows a “Low volatility” badge. The studio wrote both texts, and the difference cannot be explained without guessing.
The picture is this: the high cap and the bonus on floor thirteen belong to the high tier, while the small payouts of the lower floors explain where the low badge comes from. How often wins and bonuses land is not something the studio reports openly.
What stands behind the name Reel Kingdom
Reel Kingdom releases games in partnership with Pragmatic Play. The press release calls Cash Elevator the newest addition to the Reel Kingdom portfolio and mentions Floating Dragon Hold and Spin next to it. Yossi Barzely of Pragmatic Play put the point of the partnership as a wish to release varied slots for different audiences. The same Reel Kingdom Hold and Spin mechanic can be compared in Floating Dragon.
The bottom left corner of the game screen says REEL KINGDOM, while the menu, bet panel and settings look like those of other Pragmatic Play games. Speed cycles between normal, quick and turbo, and turbo also works by holding the space bar; in quick mode the change of digit on the floor dial is easy to miss. For the player the difference from the studio’s other games lies in the styling and in a mechanic built around floors.
