The Cage

The Cage Review

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) has exploded in popularity. This game takes you into an underground version of it in The Cage, and you get to meet 5 brutal fighters: Jim "Big Fatty" Johnson, Kenny "Ironjaw" Shambles, Artie "One Glove Man" Jefferson, Grayson "The Constrictor" Royce, and Wai "Little Dragon" Le.

The gravity engine grid is similar to what you got in another title where symbols slide down per cascade. Wild Knockout xBomb and Roundabout Kick features will help you out in all stages, and the Title Fight Bonus Round is all about knocking out your opponents via uppercut glove symbols. Each win activates a booster modifier position, and all of them are active in the final fight against the champ; Little Dragon. Cracking the 25,000x potential is the only way to knock him out, which makes you “The GOAT”.

The Cage Slot Features

The premium character symbols pay between 2.25 and 3 x your stake for 7 of a kind wins, and 3.25 to 4 x your stake for 9 of a kind wins (relevant in the bonus round only). Winning symbols are removed, and new and/or existing symbols will then slide down to fill the gaps. This process repeats for as long as you keep winning, and wild symbols come into play via different features.

The Wild Knockout xBomb symbol steps in for any pay symbol to help complete and/or improve wins, and it will then explode to remove symbols in a cross pattern. Scatters and other xBomb symbols are not removed, however, and each xBomb explosion increases the win multiplier by +1.

The Roundhouse Kick feature triggers when 3 to 6 matching symbols align diagonally without any winning combo being formed. The involved symbols are then removed, and you get 1, 2, 3, or 4 Wild Knockout xBombs when 3, 4, 5, or 6 symbols are removed, respectively. The xBombs increase the win multiplier as usual, and all remaining symbols are removed bar any scatters and xBombs.

The Title Fight Bonus Round triggers from 3 scatters in view, and this expands the grid to a 3-3-3-2-2-2-3-3-3 layout. At the center of the grid you’ll see 4 highlighted booster positions, and these are inactive in the first fight. The booster positions get activated one by one as you win title fights, and you win both ways during the bonus round.

The boxing glove uppercut symbol is needed to land a punch to the opponent's face, and this removes 1 hit point from your opponent's life bar. It gets progressively more difficult to knock each opponent out, and here is an overview of how it works:

• Fight 1 - Jim "Big Fatty" Johnson - 3 hit points to KO, which awards +3 free spins.
• Fight 2 - Kenny "Ironjaw" Shambles - 3 hit points to KO, which awards +3 free spins.
• Fight 3 - Artie "One Glove Man" Jefferson - 4 hit points to KO, which awards +3 free spins.
• Fight 4 - Grayson "The Constrictor" Royce: 5 hit points to KO, which awards +5 free spins.
• Fight 5 - Wai "Little Dragon" Le - unlimited hit points.

The boxing glove uppercut symbols do not appear in the final fight, so the only way to win is to hit the game’s win cap and thus become “the greatest of all time (GOAT)”. You also get Title Belt modifiers per fighter you defeat, and these can be used once per spin. They can also become active in the middle of any cascade, and they work as follows:

• Title Belt 1 - awards a low-value symbol multiplier of x2 to a special position for the next fight after Big Fatty has been defeated.
• Title Belt 2 - awards a low-value symbol transformer position after Ironjaw is defeated, and it turns low-value symbols into the symbol of the current fighter.
• Title Belt 3 - awards another symbol transformation position after the One Glove Man has been defeated, which means low-value symbols are turned into the current fighter.
• Title Belt 4 - gives you all previous boosters in the special positions, as well as a sticky wild in the final special position. This is what you bring with you into the final fight after defeating The Constrictor.

The Bonus Buy menu is available in some jurisdictions. It comes with the following Title Fight options:

• Pay 68x your stake to fight Big Fatty (RTP of 96.13 %).
• Pay 198x your stake to fight One Glove Man (RTP of 96.15 %).
• Pay 498x to go directly to the final fight against Little Dragon (RTP of 96.33 %).
• Pay 279x to get a Lucky Draw of either of the above (RTP of 96.27 %).

The 200 Spins The Cage Slot Experience

You get a brief and uneventful taste of the base game, before we purchase the Title Fight Bonus Round against Big Fatty. We can reveal up front that he was no match for our uppercuts, and you can see for yourself how far we went.

Review Summary

The gravity mechanic and the grid setup is similar to another title, so we certainly didn’t mind seeing it in this underground fight club rumble as well. The base game is kept somewhat interesting by the Wild Knockout xBombs and the Roundhouse Kick features, but there is no doubt that the title fights steal the show in The Cage. The developer has done a great job carving out a unique personality for each fighter, and the fight animations are solid as well.

Not everyone finds violence to be entertaining. It’s good fun seeing how many opponents you can defeat, and it can be lucrative to the tune of 25,000x your stake as well. The max win comes with a decent hit rate. The bonus round comes about every so many spins on average, and eligible players can, of course, take the bonus buy shortcut all the way to the final fight if they want. MMA fans cannot go wrong with The Cage, and this is easily one of the best, if not the best, fighting slot out there.