Rome – The Golden Age

Overview of Rome The Golden Age

Rome – The Golden Age is the newest slot to be released from the gaming developers at NetEnt. The Ancient Romans are a civilisation that modern minds find incredibly difficult to understand due to their contradictory ways. On the one hand they were hot on their values and morals, leaving stunning literature and architecture in their wake. However, on the other hand the amphitheatres found across the ancient world prove violence beyond all comprehension. This was just a way of life to the typical Roman, and it is this world of battle and blood that Rome – The Golden Age is set.

Symbols

Players can make use of the 20 fixed pay lines and the unusual grid to land three of the same symbols and give you a win. When it comes to the symbols you can expect to find the lower card symbols from 10 through to Ace and then there are the higher value symbols which include swords, golden helmets, rings, eagles, and tigers. The values are 1.2x to 5x the stake and the wilds also pay out as well as replacing regular wins to create winning combinations.

Theme and Game Play

The main game plays out in a marble floored box styled area with marbled columns which is reminiscent of a modern-day corporate box which provides the best view of the action taking place in the arena below. The reel set is constructed of a 3-4-5-4-3 layout and surrounded by marble statues. This is a great view and provides little to testify the big numbers that the game offers.
Players can become gladiators on any device and the bet range starts from just 10p per spin up to a maximum of £50 per spin.

The default return to player stands at 96.06% but this is something you want to check as it can differ dependent on where you play. The developers have stated the volatility to range from medium to high with a hit frequency of 17.6%. This may appear to be a little lower than usual, however, the frame collection feature balances this out. The main aim for players is to land the biggest multiplier they can prior to activating the free spin, which I found activated about every 195 spins.

Features

The developers at NetEnt have experience in designing many of the features you will come across in this slot and they work well on their own but are enhanced when they run in conjunction with one another. The features are the frame collection system, free spins, and multipliers. When you land the Golden Age symbols there is a frame that show their position. One of the Golden Age symbols can turn into a Rome symbol at random and this then has an activated frame around it. The position that the Rome symbol occupies will then turn wild on the next spin and the adjacent positions frame also turn wild. The new wilds also turn adjoining positions into wilds, and when the wilds are used in a win the frame around the positions disappears.

There are other benefits from the Golden Age symbols, when one lands you will see 1 – 4 points being added to the progress bar that you will see above the reels. When you collect 200 points the free spins multiplier increases progressively as follows: x1, x2, x3, x5, x7, x10, x12, x15, x20, x30, x40, x50, x75, x100, x200, x300, x500, x750 and x1000. This multiplier has no place in the base game and is added at the end of the free spins. You can activate the free spins by landing three of the scatter symbols on your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, reels. When you progress to the free spin feature all the positions that have frames or active frames which had not turn wild by the feature activating spin will stick to your reels and be given a random figure that ranges from 0.5x to 50x your bet.

Whilst the free spins are occurring any remaining empty positions will spin individually and if you land new Rome symbols these are them locked into place. At the beginning of the feature, you start with 3 free spins and this is re-set any time you land any new symbols. When the feature is over the locked Rome symbols and provide a reward of 0.5x to 50x each. The values are then added together, and the current free spins multiplier then gets added to the total win. Everything then resets back to x1, and the process starts all over again in the base game. If you get lucky and fill all the positions during the feature and the symbol values are doubled.

Conclusion

Although Rome: The Golden Age from NetEnt has a layout like the one used in the slot Jumanji, it provides players with a totally new experience. Jumanji is a branded slot for starters and has a low volatility, Rome: The Golden Age happily chops up the unwary leaving a bloody mess like a slave in Rome’s finest. However, on the flip side when everything lines up it can give you the chance to land some huge wins. However, there is no way of telling how things will go.

Due to the multiplier resetting after each round of the free spins and you need the luck of the romans to reach 1,000x or near this, but NetEnt numbers do stack up. The most encouraging news is that this slot can deliver over 1,000x the bet, but I would not hold out for this as testing has seen this happen once in 166 billion spins.

Getting to the point of landing the wins is an enjoyable experience although you are in for a volatile journey. This is also made more difficult by the lower symbols that seem to be the ones that land when you have a full screen in the free spins. The frame collection does help by filling in the gaps, and this activates enough to keep the game buoyant. Although the frames that turn wild is a concept that has been used in other slots the way they are used in this slit are unique and creates an enjoyable tension as they move from one to the other and creating the win.