Gates of Troy

Gates of Troy: Slot Overview

Get all sword-and-sandals with software provider Play'n GO in the historically or mythologically minded online slot Gates of Troy. Those familiar with Ancient Greece will immediately spot the connection with the Trojan War, an event that has rung down the ages, honoured in Homer's Iliad and countless other retellings. This time it is Play'n GO putting its spin on the classic tale in an online slot which counts Guaranteed Scatters, multiplier wilds, and free spins with wild frames as its features.

It's no wonder Ancient Greece has stuck in the popular imagination for so long. It's just got so much good stuff, from architecture, sculpture, legends, myths, stories, and more going on. Play'n GO has done an okay job of bottling some of these things for Gates of Troy, which is played on a game grid set in stone before a background of colonnaded structures, mountains, clouds, seas, and ships. The plinky soundtrack is quite nice, so all in all, Gates of Troy is a pleasant-looking and sounding slot, but one that Play'n GO was unlikely to have stretched itself to create.

Gates of Troy is a medium volatile slot played on a panel consisting of 5 reels holding 4 symbols each. Lining the board are 30 fixed paylines where winning combinations of three to five of a kind may land. Playable on any device, stakes vary from 10 p/c to $/€30 per spin.

Pointy, Greek-ish fonted 10-A card ranks line the lower side of the pay table, while the premium symbols are made up of vases, fruit bowls, and presumably Paris and Helen as the two highest paying tiles. Landing a five of a kind winning line awards 2-2.8x the bet when made up of card symbols or 6.5 to 20 times the stake for the premiums. Wild symbols appear on all reels with the ability to replace any normal paying symbol. As well as being worth up to 30x the bet for a winning line of five wilds, some wilds may appear with multiplier values on them as well.

Gates of Troy: Slot Features

The Trojan Horse is a symbol of the blue-sky thinking needed to gain access to Troy, which had withstood the Greek attack for years. The features in Gates of Troy, by comparison, aren't anywhere near as innovative and include Guaranteed Scatters and free spins with wild frames.

Guaranteed Scatters

When this feature is randomly triggered in the base game, 2 scatters will be placed on the reels in the hope of landing at least the third, thereby triggering free spins.

Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols awards 10 free spins plus a payout of 1x, 10x, or 100x the bet. In free spins, whenever a wild symbol hits, it leaves a frame around the position it landed in. Frames remain in position for the remainder of the round. On the final free spin, all frames on the reels are filled with wild symbols.

Gates of Troy: Slot Verdict

Whether the Trojan War was or wasn't an actual historic event, as some are wont to debate, it is one of the more memorable moments in Ancient Greek history/mythology. Gates of Troy, by contrast, is not one of Play'n GO's more memorable moments. In fact, it felt like it was made on the fly, with little thought having been invested in its creation. The artwork is nice, particularly the background scenery, but the rest is forgettably prosaic.

For one, the base game is pretty pedestrian. There are multiplier wilds, fair dues; who's going to say no to those? Yet, the other feature, Guaranteed Scatters, is not the most rousing addition since other games manage to land two scatters on a single spin without having to do a song and dance about it. Guaranteed Scatters came across as unnecessary hoopla rather than something exciting to look forward to. Moreover, landing more than three scatters does not award extra free spins, making the availability of scatters on all five reels redundant.

Then there are free spins themselves, with wilds framing the positions they land in, then turning all wild on the final free spin. Not a hugely uncommon occurrence in an online slot and one not used to great effect here. While we're picking holes, slots that have this feature often offer it in the base game as well as in free spins. Why pick Gates of Troy over them? It's hard to think of a reason, really. It's certainly not the potential which is about as humdrum as the rest of Gates of Troy at 3,000x the bet. If you like the frame position to wild/wild multiplier concept but want a more thrilling experience with greater potential, then Slotmill's adrenalised slot The Big Hit might be one to check out.

To sum up, is it too much of an exaggeration to wonder if a foot soldier in the Greek army who didn't give a hootenanny about Paris, Helen, Menelaus or any other of the main protagonists would have felt more jaded fighting on the battlefields around Troy year after year than we did playing Gates of Troy?