Gates of Hades

Pragmatic Play continues their 2023 slot campaign with the Gates of Hades slot. This time, they are focusing on Greek mythology and Hades, the infamous god of the underworld. This hellish slot experience is filled with mystical gems and artifacts of the realm of the dead in symbol form. The payouts will be achieved with a scattered pay system rather than traditional paylines.

There are 6 reels where players can win a maximum of 5000x the bet with a good RTP value of 96.04%. The game also has cascading wins for more winning chances on a single spin. However, that is not all Pragmatic Play has in store, there are also multipliers to the player’s bet that increase over time and have extra abilities in free spins. Let us dive further into this Gates of Hades slot review for more details.

The gates of the underworld have been opened and we are joining Hades in a quest to find mystical underworld artifacts. The game is visually stunning both in terms of the background and the symbol designs. As for the gameplay, players will be trying to land at least 8 identical symbols anywhere on the reels in scattered pay fashion.

There are 6 reels in total with 5 rows so there are 30 possible symbol positions to score on. The symbols pay anywhere on the screen and the more symbols you land the higher your payout. The maximum payout is unlocked when you land at least 12 identical symbols. There are 9 of them in total with the 5 low-wins looking like gems and the 4 high-wins looking like ancient artifacts.

The overall gameplay feel reminds us a lot of Pragmatic Play’s previous release Mochimon. Albeit, Mochimon had a much lighter visual aesthetic and cluster pays. However, the structure of the gameplay loop is similar.

As for betting options, the player has access to a wagering range anywhere from $0.2 to $100. This bet ceiling is something we have come to expect from Pragmatic Play. Furthermore, you can customize the coin value in detail. The maximum you can win is 5000x the bet with a 96.04% RTP value which is a decent slightly above-average number. Note that the volatility is set to high so expect high variance in payouts.

Furthermore, the most common payouts will come from regular paying symbols. The maximum you can win for the low-win symbols is 10x your bet. This is the highest payout for landing 12 rubies. On the other hand, for the high-wins, the most you can win is 50x your bet for landing at least 12 crown symbols. That said, these wins are boosted by the fact that there are cascading wins in the game so let us look at those.

One final note is that players also have a betting option to Buy the bonus feature for 100x their bet.

The Gates of Hades slot by Pragmatic Play does not have many extra features and instead focuses on quality. The cascading wins and multipliers are quite strong when they combine together and they appear both in the base game and free spins. Let us take a look at how they work.

• Tumble – This is the cascading wins feature that triggers after you score a scattered pay win. Winning symbols will disappear and new ones will take their place for more potential wins. The tumble will continue until there are no more possible win combinations. All tumble wins are combined at the end for a final payout.
• Multiplier Symbols – Multiplier symbols can come in four colors – red, purple, blue, and green. They appear anywhere on the reels and can hit randomly during spins and tumbles. Their values can range from 2x to 500x. When the tumble ends all multipliers symbols on the screen are added to boost your win.
• Free Spins – Land at least 4 scatter symbols to trigger 15 free spins. During free spins, whenever multiplier symbols appear and the spin is a win, the multiplier value is collected. On the left, you can see the total value of all collected multipliers. For the entire free spins feature this total multiplier value will boost each win. Furthermore, landing 3 or more scatters during FSs adds 5 more for the player.

Note that scatters have their own payouts that reach upwards of 100x your bet for 6 of them. Additionally, the Ante-bet feature is available that increases your bet by 1.25x but doubles the chance to win free spins.