We once again come face to face with the ancient Egyptian sandstone blocks and common sand. iSoftBet’s Pyramid Pays slot machine is themed after that time period again. There is never a problem with this recurring topic as long as the production company is doing something fresh and innovative with it. If that’s the case, I say bring it on. The inability to feel enthusiastic, much alone find the energy to push through a review, is a direct result of a game failing to match the aforementioned requirements. Still, let’s keep an open mind and go in to see what we can find.
Set in the perennially intriguing land of Ancient Egypt, Pyramid Pays is played on a 5×3 game grid with 243 possible winning combinations. iSoftBet has set the stage with statues of pharaohs, turquoise water, and distant pyramids that serve as bet multipliers. The type of equipment you use will determine the actual display. No matter whatever option you choose, Pyramid Pays will always look the same. Perhaps this is the aim of Pyramid Pays, with its basic white reels and generic Egypt soundtrack, both of which harken back to the game’s more traditional roots.
Players may wager as little as 30 p/c or as much as £/€30 each spin on Pyramid Pays, which is available on desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. The main game is medium to high in volatility and lacks any additional features other than a multiplying wild, which might get tedious after a while. It seemed like the free spins bonus round took forever to activate, even though there was probably nothing else happening at the time. Since Pyramid Pays has a potential return value of 96%, it is about equivalent to the typical gambling game.
In order to win, symbols must land left to right, beginning with the leftmost reel. The game has tiles with a throwback aesthetic, including 9-A card images, Ankhs, scarabs, Eyes of Horus, cat statues, and pharaohs. You need at least three of a kind to win, and the design seems like it was lifted straight from an antique slot machine. Payouts for combinations of five premium symbols range from 0.83 times the bet to 1.5 times the stake. The wild symbol, shown by a woman who looks like Cleopatra, appears on reels 2, 3, and 4, and there can be only one wild each spin. Wilds double the payout of any combination in which they appear.
Benefits of the Pyramid Slot Machine
The bonus round in Pyramid Pays is activated when you get three scattered Pyramids anywhere on reels 1, 3, and 5. This round awards 15 free games. The rules are the identical during free games, with the exception that getting three scatters awards an extra free game and activates the Pyramid Pays feature.
The reels are replaced by a pyramid covered with nine multiplier awards ranging from two times the wager to one hundred times the wager when the Pyramid Pays feature is triggered. The prize for each participant is the amount of their wager multiplied by the multiplier that was chosen at random. Once a multiplier has been awarded, it cannot be won again until the feature is triggered again. During free games, Pyramid Pays can be triggered many times, each time awarding one of nine possible rewards.
Finally, all Pyramid winnings are doubled for the duration of the bonus round if the feature is activated by a Booster Scatter appearing on the last reel.
Slot Game with a Pyramid Payout
We have faith in iSoftBet’s ability to create a high-quality game with lots of new features. As seen by the release of Pyramid Pays, the firm is also capable of quickly developing filler games. Unfortunately, the review didn’t have any “wow, this is good” moments. It lacks in visual and aural appeal, takes a couple of freaking dynasties to launch the bonus game, and fails to amaze once it does. Okay, it didn’t take that long, but there wasn’t much happening in the main game, so it seemed like it.
Since the regular gameplay holds little interest for us, let’s skip forward to the bonus stage. You start out with 15 free spins when it activates, which is a good quantity. Another plus is that it’s not as hard as you may think to get three scatters and launch the Pyramid Pays Feature. That’s presumably why doing so just nets you an extra spin. The reward round is playable, and during testing the maximum multiplier for the top prize reached 400x. We were never able to claim the top prize, but it’s easy to imagine the values adding up to a respectable total.
It seems like we have to sift through a lot of negative feedback regarding Pyramid Pays before we can discover a positive one. It doesn’t improve the overall quality of the iSoftBet catalog, and the developer is capable of much more. Since there are already so many Egyptian-themed slots available—including several really great titles—Pyramid Pays runs the risk of being lost in the shuffle. While the Pyramid Pays feature is entertaining and likely to surprise and delight some players, the remainder of the game fails to deliver much more than a middling experience.