This April 2020 release is another new entry in the pantheon of the gladiator and Ancient Rome games from All41 Studios – the Arena of Gold slot.
That means some familiar features: a sandy backdrop based on the Coliseum, and a set of symbols that features some (oddly) smiling gladiator guys carrying their various weapons. The soundtrack is also out of the box market Epic Orchestral as you would expect.
There’s a jackpot via a respins round with symbols that looks like the Wolf Gold series of games.
Why everyone is fascinated with the untrammelled barbarity of the Ancient Roman games we’d love to know – it seems horrific to us! – but fascinated they are, so we get the chance to win 2,500-times our stake while wearing a metal vest in Arena Gold!
It’s mobile and tablet friendly and already available at a load of casinos. All41 Studios aren’t a massive company but they have some decent hits to their name, including Solar Winds, which is a top-5 game in the UK, this title and Gold Collector. They’ve now started to produce Megaways titles, and have previously been best known for making look-alikes of other big hits.
Let’s take a look at the bloody sand.
Best Sites to Play Arena of Gold Slot
How to Play Arena of Gold
The gameplay is fairly simple, and the control panel certainly holds no surprises for seasoned slots players.
The style is very modern: floating controls with the spin button to the right of the reels (a 5 by 3 set with 25 pay lines) in a strip with the settings cog and a menu selector above it and the auto speed control and betting selector underneath.
Open the pay table and you’ll find the gladiators at the top: the red guy pays 20-times stake for a set of five, the man in blue pays 15-times stake for a full house, green pays 12, and orange pays 7.5-times stake. Then we have the usual card symbols, aces paying 3-times stake, kings, 2.5, and queens and jacks paying double.
The emperor is the wild, and he pays 20-times stake for a full set.
There is a scatter that pays evens for a set of three.
The Features
The scatters trigger the main feature, which is a free spins round. Three gives you a set of five spins. During the free spins round, you can retrigger with another set of three free spins. In the free spins round the central three reels merge into one with giant symbols on a 9-symbol grid.
The other main feature is the golden respins round.
These are triggered with the gold coin MEGA symbol. Six coins get you started. The three jackpot figures, Mini, Major and Maxi are shown at the top of the reels. The respins starts a new set of reels with coins and blanks only. The coins flip over to show the prize – either a jackpot or a multiplier. At the end of the feature, all the coins are flipped and the prizes on them added up and awarded to the player.
The Verdict
Well done to All41 Studios for this game, which is a decent, if not world-shaking addition to the genre.
What’s good about it?
It has nice features. The respins sort of borrowed from Wolf Gold have been borrowed because they’re very good. Everyone likes a jackpot, and you don’t pay for this one with a lowered RTP (RTP is around 96% and the volatility is medium, so this game is bang on the industry standard). The top prize is pretty good too.
The design is OK. It’s not a startling work of art, and the funny smirk on the faces of the gladiators is something we won’t forget for a while. So many of these games look the same, we can only assume that players aren’t playing them for the aesthetics!
That said, this is a very good game from a good developer and if you hit the jackpot you won’t care about anyone else’s smile because you’ll be shouting your head off! Give it a spin.
Arena of Gold Slot Q&A
Should I play Arena of Gold?
Yes, it’s a good quality game in a popular genre and its mathematics are very decent in the current market. It doesn’t have RTP ranges and it isn’t overburdened with complexity. If you like Roman games then you should certainly consider this one.
Are there any cool features I should pay attention to?
You’ll certainly like the free spins that come with the added bonus of giant symbols. That could mean bigger wins. And it certainly adds plenty of interest to the main game. Jackpots are always worthy of your attention. Check out the values at the top of the reels when you load up the game and work out how long you’re going to hang around for.
If I like this game, what else should I look at?
The Roman genre is massive. Slots players cannot get enough of the ancient past it seems. Among the more popular titles in this very overcrowded genre are Augustus, an actual tie-in with the Gladiator movie, complete with its own jackpot, and Immortal Glory from Just4theWin.
Is there anything else that I should know about the Arena of Gold slot?
The Respins feature can trigger at any stage in the game, whether it’s a base game or free spins, so keep your eyes open at all times and your fingers crossed. The feature keeps going with locked in coins until it fills up the reels.
How likely are jackpot wins in this game?
It’s hard to tell because this isn’t a true progressive jackpot but an in-game jackpot so you’ll get a multiple of your stake rather than a big prize pool. In some senses, it’s another pay table prize rather than a true jackpot, but it’s certainly worth winning. Medium variance games should deliver prizes relatively frequently, and if you run to the top of the betting range here at £50, you could walk away with a big £125,000 from a single spin in any case.