Raven Rising

Raven Rising: Slot Overview

One of the neat things about online slots compared to other forms of gambling is the astonishing range of themes they are dressed up with. The variety is so great it's like loading up your favourite streaming service and not knowing which series or movie to watch. When it comes to the action/adventure category, few slot themes hit harder than Vikings, which is no doubt one of the reasons why they keep cropping up. There's something alluring about the brutal, heroic, and at times mystical nature of the Vikings that content consumers just can't say no to. Today's slot is one such example. It's titled Raven Rising and comes from Swedish casino game studio Quickspin. Along with lush visuals; Raven Rising is a tumbling game with an increasing multiplier and Ragnarök Free Spins.

In Raven Rising, players are invited to join two seafaring Vikings on a journey to release energy from mythical stones, which are somehow connected to the power of Thor, the God of Thunder. The base game is played in Midgård, on a 5x3 arranged game grid next to the two Vikings, in a frosty, snow-coated part of the world. With a gripping audio track and artful graphics, Raven Rising is quite eye-catching, delivering a dreamy comic book-like quality in both phases of the game. The intensity is significantly ratcheted up in free spins; Quickspin calls the contrast 'soft as a lamb in the base game', then 'volatile as Thor's hammer in the bonus game.'

Where available, players can buy free spins; otherwise, it's a case of heading to the lamb-like base game and picking a stake of 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin. Playable on any device, Raven Rising comes with three RTP configurations, from 96.07% to 94.19%, before dropping to 87%, market dependent. At the highest RTP setting, Quickspin has classified the volatility as 4.5 out of 5, and the game splits RTP into 64.12% for the base game, the rest going to free spins.

Making their way across the game board are 20 fixed paylines, awarding a win when at least three matching symbols land on consecutive reels from reel number one. J to A runic royals make up the low pays, with axes, hammers, Freyja, and Odin bringing up the high pays. Landing a line of five matching symbols triggers a payout of 1.25 to 70 times the stake. Moreover, wilds come in handy here by substituting for any of the above-mentioned pay symbols. Wilds also pay up to 125x the bet for a five wild winning line.

Raven Rising: Slot Features

Raven Rising is accompanied by a simple but sturdy set of extras which includes tumbles, increasing multipliers, Ragnarök Free Spins, and a buy feature.

Tumbles

The tumble feature removes winning lines from the game grid and replaces them with symbols falling down from above. If another win lines up after the symbols have tumbled, the feature is triggered again. When no new wins appear, the tumble sequence ends.

Increasing Multiplier

In the Midgård base game, the win multiplier increases by +1 whenever a set of winning symbols is tumbled off the board. When no more tumbles occur, the multiplier resets to x1 for the next base game spin.

Ragnarök Free Spins

When getting 3, 4, or 5 Raven Scatter symbols in the base game, 7, 10, or 15 free spins are awarded, respectively. While the bonus round is active, landing 3, 4, or 5 Raven Scatters awards an additional 3, 5, or 7 free spins, respectively. Before free spins begin, players can take part in the Ragnarök Gamble if they choose to do so. A successful gamble moves players to the next highest free spins level (up to 15), while unsuccessful gambles lose all of the free spins. During Ragnarök Free Spins, the multiplier increases by +1 for each winning symbol that is removed. Also, the multiplier does not reset between free spins.

Buy Feature

Players with access to the buy feature option can pay for instant access to Ragnarök Free Spins. Shelling out 100x the bet triggers the bonus feature with three or more Raven Scatter symbols. The RTP when buying free spins is 96.57%.

Raven Rising: Slot Verdict

In the sizeable group of Viking-themed slots that take no prisoners, Raven Rising holds its own. The first hammer blow is the game's aesthetics, which express a brutally unforgiving game world where heroes stand up and smash their way to glory or are beaten down in the attempt. A sort of older school version of the 'Lambo or Ramen' attitude prevalent amongst certain glory seekers of today. The story's good, Quickspin has snuck in a stack of Viking imagery and crafted a game that throws down an enticing gauntlet, inviting players in for a punt if they're up for the challenge.

Moving onto the gameplay, which is as elegant as the rest of the slot. Quickspin's feature boffins might not have conjured up a huge amount in the way of brand-spanking new gameplay, but it's hard to begrudge what's on tap. Tumbles with a progressive multiplier are a proven duo and a welcome addition to the base game. Free spins, though, are where the studio has come up with a simple yet potentially devastating twist. It's worth repeating that the multiplier increases by +1 for each winning symbol removed from the board, which you don't see every day. In theory, this system has the ability to dramatically ramp up the multiplier. Symbol values are pretty solid, well, five-of-a-kind wins are alright, so there is potential to do some damage. Perhaps not as much as you might expect, however, as, during 100 million simulated spins, the max payout recorded was 6.804.35x the bet.

A decent haul, but berserkers might have been expecting more with all that tumbling and multiplying going on and fair dues, a bigger max win might have helped catapult Raven Rising into a higher league. No matter, though, they can't all be record breakers, and Raven Rising's simple yet strong features have the ability to create dynamite moments.