Crystal Towers

Crystal Towers: Slot Overview

Evolution Gaming-owned Big Time Gaming is a studio synonymous with slot innovation, its major claim to fame being the construction of the uber-popular gaming engine Megaways. Not content resting on past glories, the studio has also tinkered with Megaclusters, Megapays, Megaquads and a host of ideas that don't have the word Mega attached. If inspiration comes from the world around us one might assume the ideas people at BTG HQ were fiddling around with a Rubik's cube and a Jenga set when it came up with Crystal Towers, a clusters pays slot that throws off the shackles of two dimensional space to go three dimensional, or at least provide a unique 3D perception.

The gaming area is obviously a talking point. Where most grids remain in place, spinning up and down, maybe left to right, Crystal Towers' playing space is a three-dimensional Tower which spins around while dropping symbols downward, located high up in the clouds or the galaxy, on what looks like a floating rock formation. Winning combinations require at least 5 matching symbols to be connected horizontally or vertically, and wins can wrap around the sides of the Tower. Winning symbols are removed, causing the remaining symbols to collapse downwards, and new symbols drop in from the top to fill the empty parts of the Tower. Reactions continue until no new wins appear.

Players may wager 10 c to $/€20 per base game round, and hitting the spin button drops the stack of symbols through a hole in the ground, before a new four-sided Tower takes its place. Each face on the Tower is 5 columns wide, and the height changes depending on which phase of the game is in play. Highly volatile, the RTP comes in at 96.36%, or 96.37% when buying the bonus round.

In the base game, the Tower is five rows high and holds 80 symbols. Various coloured cubes are the 7 paying symbols, worth 0.1x to 0.5x for 5-6 OAK, up to 3x to 5x the bet for 20+ OAK. Cubes with patterns on them have higher values, making it somewhat easier to keep track of the premium symbols.

Crystal Towers: Slot Features

Helping create winning clusters are three different wild symbols. One of the wilds also used to trigger the free spins bonus round, which can otherwise be bought.

Wilds

Three types of wilds appear in the game - regular, multiplier, and trigger; each one of them substitutes for all paying symbols. All wins with multiplier wilds are multiplied by the value displayed on each multiplier wild that participates in the win. Whenever a trigger wild participates in a win, 10 free spins are awarded. If multiple trigger wilds participate in a win, each one grants 10 free spins, but a single trigger wild part of multiple wins still awards 10 free spins.

Free Spins

Free spins start with a Tower that is 6 rows high and consists of 96 symbols. On spins 3, 5, 7, and 9, an additional row is added to the Tower. The Tower can grow till it reaches its 10-row high maximum, where there are 160 symbols. Starting from the second free spin, only the bottom one or two rows are removed at the start of a spin. Also, starting from the second free spin, up to 10 wilds are added to random positions on the Tower at the start of each spin. During the features, whenever a trigger wild is part of a win, +10 free spins are awarded.

Bonus Buy

Players are able to buy their way into the free spins feature at a cost of 60 times their stake.

Crystal Towers: Slot Verdict

Whatever your final thoughts on Crystal Towers might be, it is surely a unique slot, ever so slightly like Hacksaw Gaming's Cubes/Cubes 2. It also feels like it could be a stepping stone into the future. Maybe not in the way Megaways caused other studios to line up for a license, but there is something futuristic about it. Imagine integrating Crystal Towers with something like Apple Vision Pro to get a full 3D effect. That would be pretty neat. Picture yourself hovering above the clouds like a hot air balloon or a satellite beholding an enormous Tower of symbols, slapping it on the side to get it spinning. Where exactly this might all lead could turn out to be interesting. For now, 3D-style slots might be in their infancy, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

Crystal Towers gets the revolution off to a solid start, but at the same time, it also gave off glorified cluster pays vibes. Like, the features accompanying the game weren't wicked awesome. Wilds, wild multipliers, are by no means negative add-ons, but in a way, Crystal Towers lacks a certain something that might have made it epic from a purely cluster-paying slot perspective. What also potentially hurts the game is low cluster values. Sure, free spins throw a lot of wild symbols at the Tower, including wild multipliers, but it felt like a real uphill battle to make financial traction. On a sunnier side, there is something satisfying about the reacting, 3D, spinning action that borders on mesmeric, which is a positive thing for a cluster pays slot.

Despite a bit of a free spins struggle, Crystal Towers is a BTG production, so big payout numbers could well be a possibility, though the official max win figure was not available for the review. Win a bundle or not, Crystal Towers definitely provides a unique way to gamble, and it would be interesting to see Big Time Gaming return to the Tower concept in the future with even stronger side features.