Sword of Arthur

Sword of Arthur: Slot Overview

Here's a thought: picture a modern-day sword in the stone situation, where rewards will be rained down on the person who can pull the weapon out, awarding them a glorious task to complete, or money or Amazon vouchers, or whatever. Are you picturing lines of hopeful people, sword in one hand, selfie sticks in the other, happier to record failed attempts in order to gain internet clout than actually achieving the task? Different times, man, and these days, one way of experiencing the Arthurian Legends is via online slots, with Swedish developer Thunderkick adding another one to the list in the form of Sword of Arthur, a 'book of' style release.

Whether studios get wild and creative with the features or not, they're a little straitjacketed when building a game world to express the topic. Arthurian world-building rules aren't set in stone, yes, pun intended, but they often include the sort of stuff you see in Sword of Arthur - castle-related items, swords, miscellaneous mediaeval stuff. Thunderkick's reputation for crafting pretty slots is not dented by Sword of Arthur in any way, which has a similar visual layout to Midas Golden Touch 2 if slightly less vibrantly defined.

A slot based on an all-time classic legend gets played out on a classic gaming set-up. The matrix has been built using 5 reels along with 10 paylines incorporated for evaluating wins - regular wins run left to right from the leftmost reel. The exception is expanding symbol wins, which follow a different set of rules. Math model volatility from a studio like Thunderkick that has been rated very high could be a scary prospect, and a default RTP maxing at 94.34% is a little sad.

The game's hit rate of 29.85% means hits are fairly persistent, and the stake range is 10 c to $/€100. In addition, users have the option of activating 2 Bet+ choices. The Bonus Boost means each spin is 2 times more likely to trigger the bonus game, while the Bonus Boost Plus makes each spin 5 times more likely to do so. The RTP rises to 94.4% or 94.43%, respectively when in use.

Sword of Arthur has a total of 10 symbols. Card ranks 10 to A are classed as the low pays, shields, armour, and a helmet are the mids, while the single Arthur symbol is the game's high pay. This leaves the wild/scatter sword symbol, which is the gateway to Sword of Arthur's bonus round.

Sword of Arthur: Slot Features

The first thing to be aware of in Sword of Arthur is its sword symbol, which takes the place of the more traditional book symbol. The sword symbol acts as the scatter as well as the wild. As a wild, the sword replaces all symbols in the base game. The sword symbol can generate payline and scatter pay wins.

Bonus Game

Hitting 3 or more sword symbols triggers the bonus game, awarding 3, 4, or 5 free spins. For the bonus round, a random symbol (not the sword) is picked to be the expanding symbol for the duration of the feature. The expanding symbol starts with an x1 multiplier, and the expanding symbol is displayed in an area beside the reels. Expanding symbols expand to cover the whole reel if doing so creates winning combinations. Expanding symbols do not need to be adjacent to each other to create wins, and only one symbol per reel expands per spin.

Power Reset

After each expanding win, the multiplier increases one level, and the number of free spins is reset to its initial value. The multiplier applies only to expanding symbols when winning as part of the expanded win feature.

Bonus Buy

Sword of Arthur's bonus buy gives players a chance to buy their way to the free spins round, where three are choices. They are a regular bonus game trigger for 125x the bet (RTP 94.45%), the bonus game with 5 guaranteed free spins for 200x the bet (RTP 94.47%), or the bonus game with a guaranteed high pay Arthur symbol for 500x the bet (RTP 94.5%).

Sword of Arthur: Slot Verdict

After coming off reviewing Play'n GO's 'book of' style slot Merlin Realm of Charm days before this review, we've got another innovative pay any position expanding symbol in free spins slot to assess. It's not a bad addition to the popular Book of Dead clique either, though there are one or two red flags. An obvious one is the RTP, and after scoping games like King of the Party, Xterminate, and now Sword of Arthur, it seems as though Thunderkick has well and truly joined ELK Studios on the downward return to player spiral. Ah well, guess gamblers might just have to accept this as the new Thunderkick reality now and respond how they see fit. Grin and bear it? Vote with their feet?

Is Sword of Arthur worth grinning and bearing while turning a blind eye to its less savoury elements in order to stay focused on the better stuff? It might be if a very highly volatile 'book' slot, with ingenious/fiendish rule adjustments have been made. Bonus rounds might start with a lower-than-usual number of free spins, but not only do free spins reset following a win, the multiplier increases as well. You can see how this could turn into a volatile ride. Sweetening the deal, Sword of Arthur has double the typical 'book of' max win, coming in at 10,000x the bet.

Sword of Arthur is a mixed batch of positives and negatives. You can see how the game might see-saw amongst the two extreme sides of the good-bad scale, depending on gambler tastes, preferences, and tolerances. Overall, Sword of Arthur brings something new and exciting to the ever growing Book table, but its challenging aspects might be too much of an ask for some gamblers.