Troll’s Gold

Troll's Gold: Slot Overview

Like much in the slots industry, both on-screen and behind it, Trolls have their origin in Scandinavia, being found in Norse mythology, for example. Back in the day, according to folklore, trolls lived far away from humans, in caves, rocks or mountains, banding together in family groups. In appearance, they vary greatly, ranging from huge, ugly and slow to almost human-like, with little separating the two species. In pop culture, we usually encounter the former type, where trolls are usually presented as dangerous lumbering beasts better to avoid or vanquish via blade or magic.

This isn't so much the case in Relax Gaming's online slot Troll's Gold. For this one, the studio has designed the game in their characteristic cartoon style, so there's a cute Troll Doll/Grinch thing going on. They also live in a pretty sweet spot on the side of a mountain where the view is sublime, the air is clean, and there are few people around getting on their troll nerves. Even better, just below their green feet lies a fair swag of riches in a mine that players have a chance of getting their hands on in the bonus game.

Carved dragons surround a 5-reel game grid, arranged in a 3-4-5-4-3 layout, providing 20 fixed paylines to land winning combinations on. This occurs when at least three matching symbols line up from the leftmost reel. Troll's Gold is playable on any device and allows stakes of 10 p/c to $/€80 per spin to be set. The treasure hunt is a highly volatile one, while RTP comes in up to two forms. The first is the default, where any player can enjoy a value of 96.30%, or, if buying the feature is a possibility, the return rises to 96.61%.

The trolls make their presence known via the high-value symbols on the payable. Here, there are four of them: a juvenile, a troll in a monster costume, another slightly older one, perhaps the daddy, and a king troll as the highest value symbol. Landing a win line made up of five of these troll symbols is worth a collect of 5 to 15 times the stake. The remaining symbols are four low-value card suits – diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades, where five are worth 1-2.5x the bet. The final two symbols are a bag of coins scatter and a golden wild symbol which appears on reels 2, 3, 4, or 5 to substitute any of the regular paying tiles.

Troll's Gold: Slot Features

Wilds are also endowed with multiplying capabilities to boost base game wins. They are joined by a Lock-In-Respins extra plus a hold-and-win style feature called the Treasure Trove Respins Bonus Game, where the full potential may be found.

As mentioned, wilds not only substitute pay symbols, but they also come with multipliers of x1, x2, or x3. They aren't quite the main attraction as they are in Top Dawg$, for example. This is because they don't ever become sticky, but they do multiply each other's values when more than one is used in a win up to a maximum of x81.

Should you land a stack of identical pay symbols on reel 1, the Lock-In-Respins feature triggers. The initial stack plus any matching symbol in view, or wilds, are locked in position, while all other cells respin. If new matching symbols hit, they are locked in place as well, and respins are awarded. When no new winning tiles appear or the screen is filled with them, a win evaluation takes place. If the grid ends up being filled, a random multiplier of x2, x3, x5, or x10 is applied to the win total.

If you land a full stack of gold coin bags on the first reel, then this awards the Treasure Trove Respin Bonus Game. The action moves underground where all regular symbols are removed from the reels, while triggering gold bags are locked to the grid. A respin commences, and if new gold bags or treasure chests land, they stick, then another respin is awarded. Coin bags hold bet multipliers of 1x, 2x, 3x, 5x, or 10x the stake, while treasure chests collect all of the other values in view.

So far, so standard, but Troll's Gold comes with a little something extra to sweeten the deal. Each gold bag or treasure chest that lands is counted on a meter located to the right of the screen. Scoring at least 12 bags wins you an additional prize, awarded when the feature concludes. Prize values are 10x, 20x, 50x, 100x, 200x, 500x, 1,000x, or 10,000x the bet when 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 positions are filled.

Finally, if you live in an area where bonus buys are permitted, then it is possible to buy the Treasure Trove Respin Bonus Game. The cost for this is 60x the stake and lands a stack of gold bags on reel one on the next spin.

Troll's Gold: Slot Verdict

Once again, Relax Gaming reaches into its bag of tricks and pulls out a hold & win style bonus game for use as Troll's Gold's showpiece. As we all know, Relax does this sort of thing better than most, and while the bonus in Troll's Gold isn't as intricate as others the studio has done, it can still produce major thrills and big potential wins. Filling 12 positions on the reel to start the prize ladder might not be the easiest task, but like pushing a boulder up a hill, once you get to the top, it just rolls on down the other side by itself.

That's not to say once you get 12 you can count on a massive win happening, of course. Yet, it does get exceptionally tense at times when a good collection is ticking along since just one more bag or chest pushes you up to the next tier, where prize values rise exponentially. The other features fill the base game nicely as well. Wild multipliers can lead to single win lines as high as 1,215x the bet, and Lock-In-Respins weren't entirely necessary, but no one's going to rue their inclusion.

Troll's Gold is a little like casting Top Dawg$, Money Train 2, and 9 Masks of Fire in a new Shrek movie. Sure, Troll's Gold isn't a rock star game destined to hog the limelight, and it kind of coasts on slots that came before it. However, Relax has made it look pretty as anything, plus it's got a great soundtrack, not to mention a bonus game that can get outrageously good at times. Mix in decent stats with a reasonably priced feature buy, and there really is only solid gaming to be found in Troll's Gold.