Shah Mat

Shah Mat is a truly luxurious chess-themed slot developed by Red Tiger Gaming. This high volatility slot has a number of excellent bonus features and mechanics including huge super symbols, special wilds symbols that merge which sees them gain an increasing win multiplier that can reach as high as 20x and of course a free spins bonus that can see players win up to 4,000x their stake.

Design

Shah Mat is a beautifully designed slot that's designed to look and feel like a high-end Persian chess board. The gold-trimmed game grid is flanked on either side by intricate stone pillars that have two imposing black horses behind them, everything about this slot exudes opulence and we absolutely love it!

The 8x8 game grid is made up of 64 squares in total, mimicking an authentic chess board. In terms of symbols, low paying ones are your standard card suits with pawns placed inside them. As you would expect, high paying symbols are all of the important pieces you'd find a chess board, a Knight, Bishop, Rook, King and Queen. 

Gameplay

This classy gaming-themed slot is your typical Cluster Pays slot, whenever a winning combination of symbols form they're removed from the game grid, allowing for new symbols to fall into place, potentially creating a whole new winning cluster of symbols. If wilds land on the grid and land next to another wild (either above or to the side) then they'll merge into each other to create one wild symbol with an increasing win multilpier placed upon it.

In terms of navigating this slot, it's the same as any Red Tiger Gaming slot, players can set their stake or automated spins using buttons on the bottom left-hand side of the game grid, or spin using the button on the bottom right-hand side of the game grid.  

Win Potential

Shah Mat is a high volatility slot with a maximum win potential of 4,000x the player's stake. One thing that's really worth noting is that this game features RTP ranges, meaning that the operator can choose to lower the RTP below the default, which sits at a disappointing 95.75%. We'd recommend giving this slot some time on the condition you have a decent bankroll, as we found it can be quite unforgiving.

We were lucky enough to enjoy plenty of merging wilds and super symbols during gameplay, however, we had a real slog on our hands when it came to triggering the Free Spins bonus, we were playing for more than 45 minutes before we actually managed to land 3 scatter symbols, which is much longer than we'd usually expect with any game.

That being said, when we did finally trigger the free spins bonus we had a seriously fun time and managed to rack up a win of 871.80 from a single spin of just 6.00... If you want to see this awesome win for yourself just check out our video earlier on in the review.  

Our Verdict

Shah Mat is genuinely one of the most beautiful slots we've ever had the pleasure of playing. Red Tiger Gaming never disappoint when it comes to the design of their new online slots, and this is arguably one of the best games they've come up with in 2021. 

We can't ignore the fact that it took 45 minutes to trigger a bonus, but that's mostly down to bad luck... The features and mechanics in this game are brilliant, we loved the merging wilds and increasing win multipliers and we'd love to see more of this mechanic in other releases.