Archangels Salvation

Good and evil always clash with one another. It can be relatively minor things, or they can be world-ending catastrophes in which only one side will prevail while the other is banished from even existing. Apart from revealing its biases, Archangels: Salvation is much more the latter kind of battle between good and evil. Not that humans should stop the good fight against minor evils, such as that one person who takes the office coffee someone else prepared. But when it comes to the final clash between angels and demons, it’s safe to say our contributions will be too minor to count. Archangels: Salvation has a 6×12 playing field with 100 fixed paylines and its verticality is a part of its very design. One of its features rewards gamblers for landing Wilds in the Hot Spots, which are areas at the very top and very bottom of the reels, and alongside the new and unknown we also have something very familiar to just about every gambler who played a slot or two – which are free spins, coming just in time to bring good wins to us all.

NetEnt is always the most ambitious of the slot developers when it comes to graphics, and this game proves that they’re still keen on staying at the very top. The results are very impressive, as all the animations look gorgeous, and the split screen really helps to highlight the difference between Heaven and Hell, and its key inhabitants. There are also minor details that we like – the burning flames at the bottom of the reels, and the lightning that seems to guard the very top, utilising the verticality of the massive 6×12 playing field for visual impact, too.

And having a fixed 100 payline system guaranteed that the NetEnt release would play differently than most other titles. The developers use the vertical nature of the reels to situate the Hot Spots at the very top and bottom, and then line up Wild placement to trigger different features. While the bonuses are just slight variations of each other, they do have a slight difference, and we’d probably give the advantage to the demons, as singleton Wilds are a lot easier to get lucky with and to make them land in the Hot Spots. At the same time, 2×2 Wilds from the angels can trigger partially unlike single Wilds, which is also a slight advantage.

You can wager between $0.40 up to $200 per spin, which is truly the sort of massive range of options we’d expect to be given odds on if the end of the world was right outside the betting place. It’s a medium variance slot that shines best when the Hot Spot features are triggering each other over and over. It’s by no means guaranteed to happen, but we have to give credit where it’s due, when it does, it’s both profitable and fun to watch. Free spins do good, too, but they’re not as exciting.

While the graphics look great, the symbols are somewhat boring and bland. Part of it is no doubt owed by the fact the reels are as huge as they are. With a 6×12 playing field, touching up the icons to be something super interesting would have been wasted work. Instead, you have some poker card symbols, some heaven and hell sigils, and the Angel and Demon which expand to take up multiple rows at once.

The free spins feature is activated by winning three or more stacked Scatter symbols. Three, four, five or six Scatters at the same time will reward 10, 15, 20 and 25 free spins respectively. There are no additional bonuses happening while the extra turns are triggered, but the Hot Spot bonuses can still occur during free spins.