Athens Megaways

Athens Megaways: Slot Overview

If there's one town which continually echoes down the ages, it's the Greek city of Athens. Few urban spots have captured the imagination like Athens, where thought, deed, and drama bubbled over in one insanely creative broth. Its Golden Age might have occurred a few years back now, but it's still a great city to visit, full of art, architecture, and culture. Or, thanks to games like Athens Megaways from Red Tiger, players can use a bit of imagination to pretend they've stepped back into the past to rub shoulders with Pericles, cast one of the world's first votes, or check out a tragedy at The Theatre of Dionysus. Keen? Let's take a look.

For Athens Megaways, Red Tiger has gone all out with the digital paint brushes to recreate a romantic Ancient Greek scene. The team has depicted a stately port city on a hillside, covered in attractive columned buildings, an aqueduct, sailing boats, mountains; the works. It's not hard to imagine wandering the steps in a himation, plucking away at a lyre and contemplating the meaning of life. It looks like a conducive sort of place for constructive leisure. It doesn't, however, look like Athens a whole lot, as seen in pictures or recreations. Instead, there's something of an Assassin's Creed Odyssey vibe going on. Ah well, creative licence and all, plus it is a pleasant scene to begin a tour of an ancient civilisation in.

The tour begins by picking a bet, where the options range from 10 p/c to $/€100 per spin - any device may be used to play Athens Megaways, from tablets to mobiles to desktops. Powering the show is a math model that functions in a medium/high volatile manner while generating a maximum return to player value of 95.68%. On the front end, players get a 6-reel game grid, each reel holding 2-7 symbols, producing 64 to 117,649 ways to win.

In all phases of play, when winning ways are produced, the symbols involved in them are removed by the cascade mechanic, and the gaps filled with symbols fall from above. Cascades continue this way until no new win appears. Wins happen when matching symbols hit on adjacent reels, starting from the first reel onwards. For the low pays, five Greek letters are used – Delta, Theta, Sigma, Psi, and Omega, while the high pays are lyres, pots, drinking instruments, shields, and plumed helmets. It is all very Hellenic, and landing a six-of-a-kind win awards 0.4-0.8x the bet for the lows, 1-3 times the stake for the highs. Wilds play a prominent role in Athens Megaways, appearing in a variety of forms as detailed below. Their core job is to substitute for any paying symbol to help complete winning ways.

Athens Megaways: Slot Features

Athens Megaways mixes a bit of history with a bit of mythology, this latter part represented by some of the features. In the base game, three modifiers appear at random to mix up the run of things, while in free spins, one of the three modifiers dominates.

• Soul Pit - At random, souls rise up from Hades and land as wild symbols on any of the middle four reels. This can create 2 to 9 wild symbols.
• Sea Fury - On any spin, Poseidon can bestow whole reel Super Wilds on any of the four middle reels. Up to three Super Wilds may appear on a spin, each one possessing a multiplier of x2 to x7.
• Olympus Blessing - At random on a spin, Zeus may award a multiplier that is applied to all wins on the current spin. The multiplier's starting value is x2-x5, and it increases by +1 after each cascade. The multiplier is capped at x20 and is removed when the spin ends.

Free Spins

Getting 3 free spins scatter symbols in view awards 8 free spins. When the bonus round starts, players click one of three identical temples. This reveals Soul Pit, Sea Fury, or Olympus Fury. The revealed feature is the only feature that will appear in free spins, but will do so at a greater frequency. No matter the feature revealed, free spins start with an x1 win multiplier that is increased by +1 by each win – up to a maximum of x20. The multiplier does not reset between free spins. If the Olympus Fury feature is active, any multipliers it produces are added to the win multiplier, but still, it can not go above x20. Lastly, each scatter landing in the feature awards an extra free spin.

Athens Megaways: Slot Verdict

To get into the spirit of things, here's a quote from one of Athens' most famous citizens, Socrates, who said, 'In every person, there is a sun. Just let them shine.' He might have said that while philosophising over two millennia ago, but the line could easily be used in an uplifting modern-day pop song. Anyway, on with Athens Megaways, which has its share of uplifting moments as well. It's a handsomely presented Ancient Greek online slot with an urban focus, even if the Athens in the background imagery doesn't immediately look like Athens in photos or recreated drawings. It still evokes the era well and mixes in with the features that Red Tiger has put a deified spin on.

Strip away the window dressing, and some of the mechanics on show here have appeared in previous Red Tiger Megaways games like Piggy Riches Megaways or the local exclusive release Kulta Jaska. This precise combination works pretty well, though, and the special effects Red Tiger has used to jazz them up help build drama. Capping the progressive win multiplier is a fairly common Red Tiger move, and while some may begrudge the studio for it, doing so hasn't exactly dented Athens Megaways' max payout capabilities, here tipping the scales at 19,992.7x the bet.

All in all, Athens Megaways is a well-made slot, though not the most edge-of-your-seat Ancient Greek option out there. For a contemporary alternative with a different sort of bite, 300 Shields Mighty Ways might be a better fit, for example. Athens Megaways isn't as dynamically world-changing as the city it is named after, and it's unlikely to form the cornerstone of any particular civilisation. But it's a neatly arranged Megaways game set in a Hellenic atmosphere full of gods and gaming elements, despite some of its parts being reused.