Fate Of Fortune

Fate of Fortune: Slot Overview

'Your fate is sealed…' So says an ominous voice greeting players to ELK Studios mysterious slot Fate of Fortune. It's a huge topic. Pondering whether fate is real or not and the ramifications of either answer quickly sends your mind on all sorts of thought loops. Let's avoid those, for now, to keep a level head and concentrate on Fate of Fortune itself, an unusual slot in all regards, but one with several recognisable throwbacks to other games.

The first unorthodoxy is the game's grid configuration which uses 5-reels, laid out in a 5-3-1-3-5 pattern. Since you need at least three of a kind to win, the central position is crucial for linking lines. The remaining view is full-on mystical, set in a mysterious Delphi like location in a forest where some of the artwork and the soundtrack reinforces a Celtic feel. While we're on the soundtrack, once again, the ELK sound team has outdone themselves, peppering Fate of Fortune with heavy metal effects at certain points that shouldn't technically work given the theme but actually do a brilliant job of intensifying the action.

Players get several betting options in Fate of Fortune as it comes with five X-iter game modes – more on those below. For now, base stakes can be set as low 20 p/c or as high as $/€100 per spin. You might have heard of the 'fickle finger of fate; well, prepare for some of that when player Fate of Fortune. Its highly volatile math model was all over the place during testing, one minute lining up regular bonus rounds, at other times showing no remorse as it pounded the balance.

Fate of Fortune uses several methods to counterbalance having just one symbol on its middle row - paying both ways is one of them. Using a connecting paylines system, wins occur when three or more matching symbols land on the 81 paylines left to right or right to left. The reduced grid lands just six regular pay symbols – three low pay Q, K, A tiles, and three magical/clairvoyant ladies as the premiums. Values are relatively low, paying 1-2 times the stake for a winning line of five premium symbols. One last symbol for this section is the regular wild, which appears on any reel to substitute for all paying symbols. A payline of all wild symbols is worth the same as the highest paying symbol.

Fate of Fortune: Slot Features

Fate of Fortune comes with a stack of features, so let's crack through them. Frist is an Expanding Wilds feature. These special wilds appear on reels 2 or 4. When they land, they expand onto the outer reel, guaranteeing a winning combination.

Mystery symbols are next, appearing on any reel except the middle one. When Mystery Symbols are in view, they all transform into the same matching symbol for a win evaluation. Mystery Symbols are instrumental to the free spins round as you will see.

Just below the reels is a swirling crystal ball. At random, a Fortune's Favour feature may come into play and is applied to the current spin. The crystal ball awards these effects:

• Lady Swap – all premium symbols in view are transformed into the chosen lady type.
• Multiplier – a random multiplier of up to x50 is applied to any wins.
• Walking Wild – a wild appears on the middle reel, and respins are awarded. On the first respin, the wild splits, then moves to reels 2 and 4. Respins end when the two wilds have walked off the grid. Other Fortune's Favour features can trigger while this is going on.
• Locked Wild – a wild symbol is added to the middle reel, and a respin is awarded. If no winner lands, the wild's multiplier increases by +1, repeating until a win finally hits. The Lady Swap or Multipliers can trigger when a Locked Wild is in place.

Winning Unlimited Nudge Spins occurs when 3 or 4 scatter symbols land anywhere on the grid. Instead of receiving a set number of free spins, players are awarded 1 Mystery Stack if 3 scatters landed or 2 Mystery Stacks for 4 scatters. Mystery Stacks appear on any reels except the middle reel, and it is possible new Mystery Stacks land during the feature as well.

On each free spin, Mystery Stacks nudge one position down, and all reveal the same pay symbol. In addition, a win multiplier is used throughout the feature, starting on x1, increasing by 1 for every free spin. If a multiplier is awarded from the Fortune's Favour feature, it multiplies the free spins multiplier before being applied for better results. Unlimited Nudge Spins continue until no Mystery Stacks are in view.

Finally, we come to the X-iter feature, which allows players to activate 5 different feature buy modes, these are:

• 100% Win – each game round is guaranteed to be a winner for 5x the bet.
• 100% Fortune's Favour – 3 spins with a Fortune's Favour on each one. The cost is 50x the bet.
• Bonus – guarantees a game round with 3 or 4 bonus symbols triggering the bonus for 100x the bet.
• Big Bonus – guarantees a game round with 3 or 4 bonus symbols and starts the bonus round with an x5 win multiplier. Cost is 200x the bet.
• Super Bonus – lands 3 or 4 bonus symbols and a guaranteed Fortune's Favour feature on each free spin. The cost is 500x the bet.

Fate of Fortune: Slot Verdict

While Fate of Fortune can stand on its own two feet, there are shades of several other games lurking in the wings. This will be personal, but the soundtrack brought back memories of Rise of the Mountain King, all played on the grid layout from Fantasma Games' Twisted Turbine. A real cocktail of possible influences then, but Fate of Fortune manages to stand apart from them all, bringing its own unique brand of entertainment to the reels.

So unique it is a little bewildering at first. The basic rules are fine, just line up matching symbols as usual on the criss-cross grid, yet the features might not be totally clear at first. Demoing is the way, not only to work out exactly how everything works but to figure out if Fate of Fortune is actually a right fit or not.

Moving on to the fun bits, the bonus game is where things get a little Razor Shark due to the banks of nudging Mystery Stacks. These can really work to your advantage, particularly when long strings of two adjacent stacks scroll endlessly down during the feature. Then all that's needed is to hit the right symbol in the central position and watch the coins come rolling in. As you might suspect, win multipliers on top of Fortune's Favour multipliers are the key ingredient to maximising returns. It is tricky to bring all of these moving parts together in just the right manner, however, and a lot of the time, Fate of Fortune blows up in your face like Ron Weasley's broken wand. When it works, it really feels like fate's smiling, up to 10,000x the bet at max.

ELK are on a major creative roll at the moment, no arguments there. As well as conjuring up new features, the team shows no fear in tinkering with the very fabric of slot design, as evidenced in Fate of Fortune and games like Night Trax. Of course, living on the edge isn't always a populous location, as not everyone enjoys being so experimental. ELK makes sure to drop more conventional slots in between, but for players that do like to tightrope on the envelope of slot design, Fate of Fortune is one to put on the to-try list.