Spartan King: Slot Overview
Developer Pragmatic Play gives players a taste of history in
Spartan King, a slot based on Leonidas💻 and his legendary band of 300. The game doesn’t
specifically state this, but the movie/graphic novel 300 is one of💻 the first things to
spring to mind when playing these sorts of games, as is the case with NextGen’s iconic
💻 slot 300 Shields and follow-up 300 Shields Extreme. At first glance, the two games
appear to share similarities. Once you💻 hit spin though, they start to drift apart, much
to Spartan King’s detriment really.
The sunny shores of the Peloponnesus greet💻 players
when the home screen loads, alongside a livid looking warrior crying out from beneath
his plumed helm, the Spartan💻 King himself presumably. From the get-go, you catch the
battling hard man vibe Pragmatic Play went for. The 5x4, 40-payline💻 grid is
backgrounded by a purple, wavy Mediterranean Sea, fields, waterfalls, and mountains.
It
is a pretty scene too, and you💻 wonder why the Spartan’s were more obsessed with
training for war than lounging around enjoying all the fecund glory. That’s💻 probably a
good thing since they wouldn’t have been able to do much about the 100,000 invaders at
Thermopylae using💻 the power of positive thoughts. Solid bronze and ripped muscle halted
the Persian advance, not to mention passion, some of💻 which Pragmatic Play has squeezed
into the cinematic soundtrack.
Spartan King is available to play on any device,
offering stakes from💻 20 p/c toR$/€100 per spin. The game runs on a highly volatile math
model Pragmatic Play has given the full💻 5 out of 5 rating to. Surprisingly, free spins
triggered quite frequently during the test run, but payouts were mediocre💻 at best. The
default RTP is surprisingly good too, where a rating of 96.6% is agreeably high,
although in this💻 day and age it might prove to be a struggle to find it at that setting
in certain markets. A💻 decent win potential (on paper at least) caps off a set of solid
figures, which aren’t quite matched by the💻 gameplay.
There are 8 pay symbols in total,
all matching the subject matter well. They start with J-A card royals, not💻 done in the
angular Greek font you often find in a game like this, but the gold trim isn’t bad💻 all
the same. They are followed by 4 premiums, consisting of swords, helms, ships, and a
warrior mid sword hack.💻 If you manage to get five of these high pays on a line, you’ll
pick up wins of 4 to💻 7.5 times your stake. Helping knock together combinations is the
1x1 sized Spartan King wild, substituting for any pay symbol💻 and is worth up to 20x the
bet for five of a kind. This wild lands on reels 2, 3,💻 4, and 5.
Spartan King: Slot
Features
Much like its namesake, when it comes to features Spartan King is pretty
Spartan. It💻 all revolves around a special multiplier wild. Design as a shield, it
appears in a 2x2 size and may land💻 anywhere on the reels to substitute for any of the
pays and gets an extra ability during free spins.
The free💻 spins round operates much
the same as the base game, with one alteration. What you need here are 3 or💻 more of the
red flag scatter symbols to land on the reels. When they do, 3, 4, or 5 in💻 view award
8, 10, or 12 free spins, as well as a win of 1x, 5x, or 20x the bet,💻 respectively. In
free spins, the 2x2 wild shield may land at any moment to substitute as it does in the
💻 base game. The difference now is when one or more hit on the screen, the total of any
win is💻 multiplied by the random amount of x2, x3, x5, x10, or x25.
Spartan King: Slot
Verdict
For players who are into the💻 Ancient Greece theme type thing, Spartan King has
qualities they may enjoy. It looks alright for one, and brings a💻 touch of the Med to
the reels for a bit of escapism. The theme’s been handled quite well too. Sparta💻 is
nothing new in the slot world, or any other world either really. Yet something about
the old warrior culture💻 strikes a deep nerve, their stories having been retold in one
form or another for nearly 2,500 years. That tendency💻 doesn’t look like stopping
anytime soon either so engrained are the 300 in the Southern European psyche.
Once you
start hitting💻 spin, enthusiasm starts to fade like Xerxes’ hopes after a while. Playing
Spartan King is okay, but it doesn’t fire💻 the imagination near as much as the subject
matter it portrays. The star of the show is the 2x2 wild💻 shields. Three landed
simultaneously in the base game at one point, producing a tidy win, though so many at
once💻 are a rare occurrence. Shield wilds naturally perform better during free spins
when they conjure up a decent multiplier. They💻 can be irritating too since the
multiplier animation plays regardless of whether there is a win on-screen or not. As💻 to
max payouts, Pragmatic Play claim wins of over 7,480x the bet are possible where a swam
of those shield💻 multipliers would come in handy, but as we've seen in the past, max
wins in Pragmatic slots are often highly💻 exaggerated.
On the whole, Spartan King isn't
the most exciting game to ever come from this studio. The main issues are💻 the game
phases are hard to tell apart, and restricting a game to 40-paylines on a 5x4 grid just
feels💻 dull, unless you come up with something extra to carry the game. Spartan King
simply doesn't have that. Then there💻 is also the niggling thought that the Spartans
have been better represented in slots before.
