Hearts of Venus

Hearts of Venus: Slot Overview

Master of the scatter pay, Pragmatic Play, returns to the award wins from any position mechanic to douse it in flowers for the online slot Hearts of Venus. While doing so, the studio has also injected a grid multiplier system, close to yet not exactly the same as the one found in the candied release Sugar Rush. The resulting game bears a resemblance to Sweet Rush Bonanza, yet it avoids being an all-out repeat performance, since Pragmatic Play has added a randomness to the way the multiplier spot feature functions. Instead of automatically highlighting winning symbol spaces, multipliers appear at random. However, multis can still grow, leading to another bout of scatter-paying wins boosted by multiplier spots action the studio excels at designing.

Hopefully you like flowers, hearts, and purply, pinky colours because Hearts of Venus overflows in those. The art direction makes sense when considering Venus in her role as goddess of love, and the game bursts from the screen like a bright flower in full bloom. Venus can be found next to the reels, like her counterpart Zeus was in Gates of Olympus, and she swirls with life between base and bonus game despite looking like she was rendered using AI. That impression could be totally wrong, though, of course. Either way, there's a flowery, fecund summery, springtime feel here for players who appreciate that sort of thing.

Winning combinations are created when 8 or more matching symbols land anywhere on the 6x5 gaming area. Winning symbols are removed by the tumble feature, which then drops symbols to refill the empty spaces. Tumbles repeat until no more wins occur. Stakes of $/€0.20 to $/€240 may be selected in this medium volatile game, where the RTP is 96.5%.

Five gems make up Hearts of Venus' low-pay symbols, awarding 1.5x-5x the stake when landing 12 or more matching symbols. From there, the game lands harps, helms, pearls, and golden apples, paying 6.25x-50x the bet for a 12+ OAK hit. Wilds do not appear in Hearts of Venus, but scatters may land on all reels.

Hearts of Venus: Slot Features

Hearts of Venus sprinkles multiplier spots onto the grid at random, which become progressive when free spins are active. Players also have a set of special bets and feature buys at their fingertips.

Multiplier Spots

On grid positions, a random multiplier of x2 to x1,024 can appear at any spin or tumble. Whenever a winning symbol explodes on top of a multiplier, the multiplier increases by adding its starting value one more time. Multipliers apply to wins that land on top of them, and multiplier values are added to each other when more than one is covered by the same win. In the base game, multipliers are cleared when there are no more tumbles.

Free Spins

Hitting 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters in the base game triggers 6 free spins with starting multipliers of x2, x4, x8, or x16, respectively, placed on the whole grid. During free spins, multipliers remain in place until the round ends and can be increased by the starting multiplier, which is called the Multiplier Boost, with tumbles. When scatters land, they are collected. Every three collected scatters increase the Multiplier Boost to the next level in an order of x2 up to x1,024. Each time the Multiplier Boost increases, players are awarded +2 free spins. If the Multiplier Boost reaches x1,024, +10 free spins are awarded.

Special Bets & Feature Buys

The special bets are an ante Bet, Super Spin 1, Super Spin 2, and Super Spin 3. The ante bet triples the stake to make the chance of triggering free spins 10x higher. Super Spin 1 costs 20x to start each spin with a multiplier of x2 to x1,024 on each position, and the Multiplier Boost is double the chosen multiplier on the grid, up to x1,024. Super Spin 2 costs 250x to start each spin with a multiplier of x32 on each position, and the Multiplier Boost is x64. Super Spin 3 costs 1,000x to start spins with a multiplier of x128 on each position, and a Multiplier Boost of x256. Free spins cannot be triggered from Super Spins.

Players also have the opportunity to buy free spins triggered by 3 scatters for 100x or triggered by 5 scatters for 400x the stake. 250x buys free spins activated by 3-6 scatters, which comes with the chance of gambling for double the starting multiplier and Multiplier Boost up to x128 - or possibly losing the entire round.

Hearts of Venus: Slot Verdict

In Hearts of Venus, we find Pragmatic Play taking some of its most successful ideas and blending them into a new package. Relatively new, since a lot of what takes place on its reels has a strong ring of familiarity to it, what with all the scatter-paying, tumbling, and multiplier-focused gameplay. However, the random placement of multiplier spots and the way they are able to grow gives the game a more distinctive personality. So instead of being Gates of Olympus clone 57 or another Sugar Rush imitator, what's come out of the other side is fresher than what it could have been.

What happens now is that instead of planting a multiplier beneath every winning symbol, Hearts of Venus takes a more unpredictable route which may thrill players, or have them pining for the old ways of doing things, depending on when and how the random placements unfold. Starting multiplier values are critical as well, since not only do higher values start higher, they add a greater value to themselves when wins land on top of them. It's a twist that is either better or worse depending on point of view, yet at the least, provides an intriguing and potent alternative. This refined system does not lack potential either, with Pragmatic Play capping wins in Hearts of Venus at 25,000x the bet.

Hearts of Venus might feel like a best-of-hits compilation, but it arguably does enough to stand on its own two feet in a flowery section of the casino away from its siblings. Players acquainted with the studio's early forays in these technical areas should feel right at home, while still being able to be surprised from time to time with the changes that have been made. While Hearts of Venus is closer to a reiteration of the past than a brand new fork in the road, it has the ability to give fans of scatter pays and multiplier spots an entertaining ride they might not have been on before.