Play Towering Pays Excalibur Slot

Towering Pays Excalibur Review

The Towering Pays engine from Yggdrasil partner, GamesLab, has yet to take off and reach the mainstream in any significant way, and this dynamic reels experience has a long way to go if dethroning the Megaways engine is their ambition. None of the 3 previous Towering efforts have climbed very high on the charts, and Towering Pays Excalibur, unfortunately, does not come across as a potential breakthrough game.

The visual presentation is less impressive than in the previous Towering Pays Valhalla, and despite more features having been thrown into the mix, this medieval Arthurian effort comes across as too complex, incongruent and awkward. You get plenty of features at least, if that’s your thing, and it will take you a while to wrap your head around everything.

Towering Pays Excalibur Slot - Reels Screen

Towering Pays Excalibur Features

The premium animal and character symbols pay between 1 and 6 x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, and the King Arthur Wild steps in for all regular pay symbols to help complete winning combinations. The wild symbol can appear on all 5 reels, and it pays 10x your stake when you line up 5 on a payline. You can turn on the Quest Bet, which costs a bit more per spin, and doing this adds an extra Hold & Spin feature to the mix.

The Excalibur Magic feature triggers whenever you land the stacked Excalibur symbol either fully or partially in view, and it appears on reels 1, 2 and 3 in the base game. It’s basically a mystery symbol feature, as the Excalibur Swords that land all turn into a randomly chosen pay symbol. The Excalibur Swords can land on different reels in different features, including on all 5 reels when the 5x8 grid is maxed out in the Camelot feature.

The Stage Play feature kicks in whenever you land the Excalibur Sword in at least 1 position on each reel it can possibly land on. This adds +1 row, which equals +10 win ways, each time it happens, and the grid maxes out with 8 rows and 65 win ways in total. The grid remains expanded on the same bet level, and it only resets as the Avalon feature comes to an end.

The Prize Multiplier may apply to win lines at random times, and the size of the possible multiplier varies with the size of the grid. The more extra rows you’ve piled on, the higher the multiplier, and it ranges from x2 to x10.

The Avalon Feature triggers when the Excalibur sword appears in at least 1 position on reels 1, 2 and 4 on the maxed out 5x8 grid during base game play. This awards a spin on the Feature Wheel, as described below.

Towering Pays Excalibur Slot - Bonus Wheel

Landing 3 Feature Wheel symbols on reels 1, 3 and 5 triggers the Feature Wheel, and here you can win either of the 4 bonus rounds, win spins, the Hold & Spin feature or Wheel Upgrades that gives you a higher chance at landing the more lucrative features.

All Bonus Rounds award 6 free spins, and you start out on a reset 5x3 grid. You get +1 extra spin each time you land the Excalibur in at least 1 position on all possible reels it can appear. The Lancelot feature comes with more frequent prize multipliers to boost your winnings, while the Merlin feature comes with a guaranteed prize multiplier per win.

In the Arthur bonus round the Excalibur symbol may appear also on reel 4, and you may also benefit from the prize multiplier more frequently than in the base game. The top-tier Camelot bonus round can land you the Excalibur sword on all 5 reels, but only if the grid is maxed out. You also get more frequent, but not guaranteed, prize multipliers per win.

The Win Spin feature comes with guaranteed Excalibur swords that cover reels 1, 2 and 3, so only reels 4 and 5 spin. The grid does not expand during the win spin feature, but you’re guaranteed a win per spin.

With the Quest Bet active, the Excalibur mystery symbol will sometimes reveal shield symbols, and you need at least 6 in view to trigger the Hold & Spin feature. Each extra shield above 6 expands the grid with +1 row up to 8 at best. You get 3 respins with the triggering shields locked in place, and new sticky shields reset the respins tally. All shields come with random prizes, and filling the grid awards a 1,000x jackpot. You can also win the Feature Wheel from the shields.

Non-UK players, and anyone eligible, can take advantage of the Bonus Buy feature. This gives you 2 options, and you’ll basically pay 50x your stake for a spin on the Feature Wheel that can award Wheel Upgrades, Lancelot Spins or 2 Win Spins. Pay 80x your stake for a Feature Wheel spin that also includes Merlin Spins and up to 5 Win Spins.

The 200 Spins Towering Pays Excalibur Experience

You get to see the Excalibur Magic feature in action, before a spin on the Feature Wheel gives us the Lancelot Spins at 1:35 into the 6:27-minute highlights video. The hard-to-get Merlin feature is triggered close to the 4-minute mark, and you can see for yourself how we fared by hitting the play button below.

Review Summary

We enjoyed the audiovisual presentation in the previous installment, Towering Pays Valhalla, more than we did in this Arthurian follow-up. Piling on more features and complexity is not necessarily a good thing either, and it all became a bit too complicated and disharmonious for our taste. Some players may enjoy the fact that there is a lot to comprehend, while others will shy from the feature overload.

The towering feature does not come with the “grid reset fatigue” you may get from the Infinity Engine, and, of course, it helps that the grid does not reset until you’ve triggered the Avalon feature. The 6,500x potential has been sliced significantly from the Norse installment mentioned above, but the volatility is also a tad less brutal. Overall, it feels like a step back compared to Towering Pays Valhalla, with a somewhat clumsy vibe hanging over it.

If you appreciate Towering Pays Excalibur you should also try:

Towering Pays Valhalla - is a Norse mythology installment from GamesLab, and it comes with a better visual presentation and a less convoluted and complex set of features. It’s still about expanding the grid via mystery symbols, giving you multipliers up to x10, and you also have 4 bonus rounds and a 10,000x potential.

Towering Pays Egypt - takes you to ancient Egypt, and this GamesLab release is also visually better than the game at hand. The stage play feature expands the grid as usual, with possible multiplier boosts up to x10. You can take or reject features as they are unlocked, and you get 3 bonus rounds with a 5,000x potential.

Towering Pays Babylon - is actually less impressive than the game at hand, visually speaking, and the core features involving stage play grid expansion and multipliers are the same. It comes with a similar reject/accept feature trail, as well as 4 different bonus rounds, and the max win potential is 8,000x your stake.