Secret of Troy

Secret of Troy Jackpot Wars: Slot Overview

Developer SG Digital brings together the old world and the new in their release, Secret of Troy Jackpot Wars. On one side, players actively spin a classically inspired slot based on the story of Troy, where the Greeks and Trojans duked it out for years over the outrageously good looking Helen. On the other hand, Secret of Troy is wired into SG's new Jackpot Wars network. In this, players gear up robot avatars, collecting tickets while they play to enter tournaments to battle over four jackpots.

Let's focus on Secret of Troy for now. Here, we find a 5-reel, 3-row game panel, with 20 fixed paylines, located outside the walls of Troy. Archaeologists have found the actual site of Troy near Gallipoli in Turkey. To be honest, the walls don't look that imposing, but they had different weapons back then, and maybe some stonework has worn away over the years. Whatever the explanation, the Greeks failed to break them, relying on the famous Trojan Horse to gain access instead. We get touches of all of these elements in Secret of Troy via fairly drab background imagery and features.

Secret of Troy Jackpot Wars may be played on any device offering stakes of 20 p/c to £/€50 per spin. Medium volatile, the game has a theoretical RTP of 96.60, chaining together wins when three or more matching symbols hit, left to right across the grid.

There are 9 pay symbols on the table, starting on the low side with card suits icons imprinted on what look like casino chips. Values improve for the premiums where find an anonymous warrior, Paris, Helen, Agamemnon and the game's logo. Five of a kind wins range in value from 10 to 25 times the stake when made up of premium symbols. Double that for the wild symbol at 50x the bet for five of a kind, though it is more commonly used to complete winning combinations by replacing any pay symbol.

Secret of Troy Jackpot Wars: Slot Features

Secret of Troy's main function is to act as the vehicle for SG's Jackpot Wars system, but it has a few tricks of its own. These are Swift Footed Free Spins and Troy Free Spins. Land 3 helmet adorned scatter symbols on reels 1, 3 and 5 to trigger Swift Footed Free Spins. This is a round of theoretically unlimited free spins, ending when 3 arrow symbols have landed on reel the middle reels. No other modifiers appear during this round.

Above the reels is a trojan horse which moves along a meter by 1 whenever a horse symbol lands on the reels in the base game or Swift Footed Free Spins. Collect 12 horse symbols to make it to the other end and trigger 9 Troy Free Spins. In this round, which cannot be retriggered, when wild symbols hit, they turn sticky for the duration.

Alternatively, players can cash out of Troy Spins if they prefer. As the horse moves along the meter, a value appears on the right-hand side. Instead of collecting all horses to trigger free spins, you can click cash out instead to collect an amount ranging from 4-56x the bet.

Now onto the main event - Jackpot Wars. Jackpot Wars is essentially a set of 4 progressive jackpots with threshold limits. You start by choosing a robot avatar – heavy, medium, or light, and each one possesses different characteristics. It's possible to change robots and pick a clever name for them as well.

When you play slots connected to Jackpot Wars, you collect 1 cog for every 20c and 1 ticket for every €25 wagered. Cogs can be used to upgrade your robot by exchanging them for, say, weapons or armour, while tickets get you access to the various jackpots. There are 4 of them, titled Junior League, Combat League, Armoured League, and the VIP League. When the jackpot reaches the threshold amount of €200, €2,000, €20,000, or €250,000 respectively, players have a window of time to enter their robot to battle other players in order to win prizes.

After rounds of one on one battles, the top four entrants in each jackpot collect 85%, 10%, 2.5%, and 2.5% of the prize pool. The thing is, battles are conducted on a purely lucky basis - robot upgrades via cog trades do not affect the outcome.

Secret of Troy Jackpot Wars: Slot Verdict

It might be that Secret of Troy wasn't the best game SG could have paired Jackpot Wars with. On one side of the screen, you've got loincloths and bronze weaponry; on the other, high-tech robots. Would Jackpot Wars groove better if sitting next to a futuristically themed slot instead? Then again, maybe players will just be content having extra chances to win, regardless of theme. Besides, you can minimise the Jackpot Wars window so it can't be seen anyway, to get on with the Ancient Greek action.

The question is whether you would actually want to. Secret of Troy wasn't the most exciting game to play, not to mention it looks rather dated. One nice thing is having the ability to cash out Troy Spins before they trigger so you can quit a game early and not lose your hard work. Cashing out is something to seriously consider as well. The first time Troy Spins triggered was after something like 150 regular spins, so quicker than anticipated. The following bonus round resulted in a net win of precisely nothing, which hey, can happen in any game, but it still left a sour taste in the mouth. Technically, the game can produce wins up to a cap of £/€250,000, though not all bet configurations may be able to achieve it.

There is a feeling Secret of Troy isn't the best accompaniment to Jackpot Wars. Maybe games which gel with the robotic concept would make more of an impact, at least while Jackpot Wars is in its infancy. Also, you can collect all the upgrades in the world for your robot, turn it into some T-1000 level killer, and it makes zero difference to your chances of winning battles. Despite that, Jackpot Wars is a fairly decent addition and introduces an extra level of player engagement. It's not a massively lucrative jackpot compared to the big-hitting progressives out there, which might dampen enthusiasm for the biggest win chasers.

Overall, it seems like Secret of Troy Jackpot Wars is part of a concept heading into new and interesting waters. It would help if it was complimenting a stronger game; since, as it is, Secret of Troy comes off pretty pedestrian.