The Vikings might have conquered or plundered vast swathes of Europe and beyond in their heyday, but who could have foreseen the way they've dominated the online gambling industry as well? Imagine a seer from back in the day having visions of strange cartoon-like images on a monitor relentlessly spinning while strangely garbed people pump cash in with the hopes of withdrawing more than was inserted. For another chance to do just this alongside a badass culture of the past, developer Pragmatic Play has designed the online slot Viking Forge.
A mighty Viking game world greets players as they enter Viking Forge. There doesn't seem to be much forging going on, though, no beating of metal into dangerous weapons or anything like that. Perhaps the forging part refers to an internal moulding of spirit and character put to the test by a challenging slot. Perhaps. We'll see. The visuals Viking Forge presents are up to the usual Pragmatic Play standard, meaning they're rather high quality, depicting an almost mythical landscape for players to try their luck in.
Volatility is also high, rated 5 out of 5, while the default RTP is 96.05%. At least, this is the return value when staking 20 p/c to $/$240 per spin, dropping to 96% when using the ante bet or 96.06% when buying free spins. The ante bet increases the stake by 25% when activated, increasing the chance of triggering free spins.
Viking Forge is played on a 6-reel, 5-row game board that utilises a scatter pays mechanic for awarding wins. When at least 8 matching pay symbols are in view in any position, cash is awarded. The tumble feature removes winning symbols after they have formed a scatter win. Symbols drop down to close up the gaps this creates, and if this produces another win, the tumble feature triggers again. This process will repeat until no new wins appear. Low pays are Viking-influenced 10 to A card royals, while high pays are a mug, a sword, a hammer, and a Viking chap. Hitting 8-9 of-a-kind wins pays out 0.3 to 10 times the bet, going up to 3 to 100 times the bet for hitting a 12+ sized scatter win. For Viking Forge, Pragmatic Play has not included a wild symbol.
For features, Viking Forge throws up a shield wall of tumbling, coin collecting, and free spins.
Coin overlay symbols may appear randomly attached to any symbol type except scatters. When Coins hit, they do so with direct money values of 0.1 to 20 times the bet or multiplier values of x2, x3, x5, or x10. If a symbol with a Coin overlay attached is part of a winning combination, the value of the Coin is added to a meter. Direct money values are added to the meter, whereas multiplier values multiply the meter. When the spin and tumbles end, the meter's value is awarded.
Hitting 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols in the base game triggers 10, 20, or 30 free spins plus a payout of 3x, 5x, or 100x the bet, respectively. During the free spins round, Coin values are applied to the meter, which lasts until the feature ends, where the values are accumulated or multiplied. Landing 3 or more scatters during the round triggers an additional +5 free spins.
To get right to the free spins round, players may buy the feature for 100 times the bet. When buying free spins, 4, 5, or 6 scatters will randomly land to trigger it.
There you have it, warriors, a relatively straightforward release that Pragmatic Play has built on a scatter pays win mechanic. It's a mechanic the studio certainly has an affinity for, having designed a load of examples by now, from Sweet Bonanza to Gates of Olympus and beyond. Some are new, some are pretty much reskins, and some offer slight modifications to the basic template. Viking Forge leans towards this latter definition, delivering something less common for enthusiasts of the studio's scatter pays slots to try out while not attaining berserker levels of innovation.
The new bits aren't bad, either; they're easy to get to grips with and potentially exciting if the meter builds a significant total. As is often the case, this feature can technically perform in the base game, but it gets a considerable leg up in free spins since the meter's total persists, hopefully stacking in value until the feature ends. It didn't exactly pop with reckless abandon during testing, and the 10,000x the bet, whilst impressive, felt a bit optimistic. Then again, Coins not only add their values to the meter, but some of them multiply it as well. If you can manage to ram a few multipliers against the meter, the results might be alright.
With that, Pragmatic Play adds another scatter pays slot to its already extensive collection, effectively cornering much of the market. Like the majority of its siblings, Viking Forge is another well-made, sturdy as you like example of this form of gambling. Its lack of the massive win multipliers found in other related slots, like the applicable Gates games, might dissuade some players to a degree, but coins are hot, and collecting them might be just what others are looking for in this sort of game.
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