The Golden Owl of Athena

Now here’s a theme we weren’t expecting. Certainly, Ancient Greece has a lot of gods and each of those gods has plenty of stories to tell. Athena is no exception. The patron deity of the city of Athens, which led the disunited Greek states for some time, and is today the capitol of the Modern Greek state, she is depicted with a shield and spear, but also an owl, signifying the importance to strive towards knowledge and art as well as being competent in battle. Perhaps Betsoft would like to imply that playing their title is the wise thing to do, hence why they put Athena’s familiar as the mascot of the title.

It’s certainly a bold statement and in this review, we’ll see if it stands up to scrutiny. The Golden Owl of Athena is played on a 5×3 playing field with fixed ten paylines that pay left to right. The owl itself acts as both Wild and Scatter, acting as a gateway to the title’s other feature, which is the free spins bonus. During this bonus, a certain symbol is chosen and expanded across the reels, potentially covering them in entirety.

This title won us over with its theme alone the first time we booted it up. The backdrop is absolutely gorgeous with Ancient Greek buildings, a running river and a waterfall off in the distance, a lush, green maze and tall trees depicting the ancient city of Athens in all of its glory.
We’ll admit, we’re suckers for Ancient Greek mythology, and this just played into our desires perfectly. We can only imagine how gorgeous it would have looked with some small animations thrown in there, but the backdrop is unfortunately quite static. We don’t have any plans to dock points for it, however. It looks fantastic even without any movement.

We’re not so enamoured with the gameplay side of things. Rolling the Wilds and Scatters into one symbol was a really good idea, as it meant that any larger amount of free spins would immediately be followed up with a sizeable sum of cash. However, Betsoft had to balance around this, and the advantage turned into a disadvantage as it meant the feature was more difficult to trigger, which draws out sections of gameplay during which you’re doing nothing but spinning and hoping for a win. The downside expands further as the only other bonus in this slot is locked behind the free spins bonus.

You can play The Golden Owl of Athena for as little as $0.10 up to $10 per spin. The wide range should appease most gamblers, and an RTP of 95.05% is somewhat on the lower side, but it isn’t that bad, either. The biggest downside is one we already mentioned – both special features, while quite lucrative, are very difficult to activate. It punishes more casual players, as it will take them a while for the title to open up its bonuses, and if you’re particularly unlucky, you might play through several sessions and see neither feature. Still, it’s difficult to pass on the possibility of a jackpot that’s 5,620x the wager.

Beyond the playing card symbols, we quite like the icons in this title. Spears, golden helmets, trees, temples and priestesses all fill the reels, each with their own small animations that play when they’re part of a winning combination.

Collecting three, four or five Golden Owls will reward players with eight, twelve or twenty free spins, respectively. In addition, it will also pay out an escalating cash prize depending on how many symbols activated the bonus. It is possible to re-trigger the feature. During the free spins bonus, a random symbol, that is not Wild, is picked, and becomes activated for the duration of the feature. This icon will expand to fill the reel its on when it appears, and it is possible to cover the whole reel. If you don’t fancy waiting, you can press the Buy Feature button where you pay money to directly access the bonus instead of waiting for the features to occur naturally.

On top of that, if you’ve been dealt a really good winning hand that you want to greedily increase, or you want to bump up a somewhat lousy win, you can activate a double up feature, during which you flip a coin and guess the correct side to increase your winnings – or lose them all if you guess wrong.