Welding together elements of the old and the new is software provider Pragmatic Play's online slot Gears of Horus. In this slot, Ancient Egypt meets the future, or a Steampunked version of the future, where cogs relentlessly turn and arcane gadgets have been blended with traditional stonework. It's not a particularly common idea, but it's not a new one either. Pragmatic Play itself has dabbled before in Rise of Giza PowerNudge, Thunderkick in Pyramyth, and Hot Rise Games to a lesser extent when making Nile Mystery DoubleMax.
Using advanced technology to brighten up Ancient Egypt is a smart idea, and Pragmatic Play has executed it well in Gears of Horus. Cogs, there's gotta be cogs, twirl next to a game grid that blows little jets of steam and is decorated in strange blue orbs and movable statues. The background furthers the concept depicting futuristic pyramids, one lit up like a skyscraper at night, conjuring images of floors of scribes, furiously filling in spreadsheets on tablets of stone or reems of papyrus while deadlines loom before floating them upstairs where the big wigs in charge probably never even look at them. But you know, gotta keep the peon masses occupied so their minds don't turn to overthrowing the dynasty. It's a nice, very detailed view.
Gears of Horus is a cluster pays slot played on a 6x6-sized gaming grid that can be expanded up to 8x8. Winning clusters required at least 5 identical symbols to be connected in horizontal or vertically adjacent positions. Accepting bets from 20 c to $/€240 per spin, this is a highly volatile slot with a default RTP of 96.06%.
After each win, the winning symbols are removed and replaced by symbols tumbling down from above. This may cause a new win to be created, and if it does, then the tumble process triggers again. As for symbols, the largest cluster sizes in Gears of Horus contain 15+ identical symbols, but they aren't worth a whole lot, which is where the free spins multiplier comes in handy. The pay symbols are green, purple, blue, and red gems, then four pieces of Ancient Egyptian-inspired jewellery. Hitting a 5 OAK cluster is worth 0.1 to 1 times the bet, and at the top end, a 15-64 OAK hit pays 5 to 100 times the bet. Wilds appear on all reels, substituting for all symbols except the scatter. If wilds make a win of themselves, they have the same value as the highest pay symbol.
If there is one thing the Ancient Egyptians were good at, it was building things, and players get an inkling of this in Gears of Horus as the gaming grid builds following consecutive winning tumbles. Players also get a rising multiplier during free spins, though one that resets at the end of each free spin, and a bonus buy.
After the first, second, third, and fourth consecutive winning tumble, the grid expands down, up, right, and left, respectively. In the base game, when all sides have been unlocked, on the next tumble, a block of wild symbols is added to the grid in a random position. The block is made up of a minimum of 2 wilds and a maximum of 16. The grid stays at 8x8 till the end of the spin, then resets for the next one.
Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols in the base game awards 8, 12, or 20 free spins, respectively. During free spins, each spin has a basic multiplier of x1. Every tumble increases the multiplier by x1. For each of the first 4 tumbles on every spin, the multiplier is increased by x1, x2, x3, x4, or x5, additionally, at random. The multiplier applies to all wins during the spin. At the end of each free spin, the multiplier returns to x1. Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols during the round awards 8, 12, or 20 extra free spins. Consecutive tumbles expand the grid as in the base game and it resets for new free spins.
The free spins round can be bought from the base game for 100x the bet. When buying the feature, 3, 4, or 5 scatters randomly land to trigger it, and the default RTP is 96.02%.
Gears of Horus started really well, Pragmatic Play having birthed an absorbing game world, mixing the old mysterious ways of Ancient Egypt with the newer mysterious ways of Steampunk and beyond. The music, too, is pretty sweet, hypnotically weaving together strands of classic Egyptian slot music then giving it a contemporary remix. From a theme standpoint, Gears of Horus is spot on.
When the reels started spinning, Gears of Horus often struggled to be as enjoyable as hoped for. The expanding grid feature is fine; it can lead to a sizable grid with significant room for landing winning clusters. However, cluster values are on the lowish side, and despite having so much potential space, the most valuable clusters only require 15 or more symbols anyway. There just wasn't much to really look forward to or hope for in terms of big, chunky, alluring top cluster rewards. However, players might get lucky, and the game drops a massive wild block onto the screen for their amusement. Not to mention free spins, where the crucial addition of a win multiplier is made.
The game just never really took off the way a Prag slot often does in a review, though, and Gears of Horus seemed a toughie in general. Everything has to happen on one spin or one free spin. In the case of free spins, for example, neither the multiplier nor the grid expansion is persistent. You start from scratch on each spin and free spin. There are no doubts Gears of Horus is able to crank its gears when it wants to, up to a win cap of 10,000x the bet, just that it felt easy to get stuck in a rut of frustrating spins, which turned out little even when the screen was fully expanded and/or a multiplier had been brought into play. But hey, such are the whims of fortune, and gamblers might hit it lucky while playing Gears of Horus, in which case you can see how, like a madcap inventor wearing chunky brass goggles yanking levers, it might pull off something special.
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