ABOUT
Secret City Gold by Pragmatic Play tells a tale featured in many adventure movies: in a jungle far away there is a hidden city full of treasures. Just as this plot always makes for a great movie, the theme is also prevalent in slots created by many iGaming providers. In the Secret City Gold, there are also several unique features which make for an exciting gaming experience.
Betting Options and Bonus Features
Secret City Gold presents its Aztec theme on a 4x5 layout with 25 paylines. The low-paying symbols are 10, J, Q, K, A while the premium symbols include stone statues and the gold coin (which pays the best at 4x for a full line). The stats for this game are what you would expect from a modern online slot: 96.06% RTP, high volatility, 10,000x max win, and a 1 in 3 hit frequency.
In the base game, there is a Wild that replaces all regular symbols plus rewards 8x the bet if players land all 5 Wilds on a payline. In addition, a feature called Shape Wins will randomly appear, putting a random pattern on the reels. After all normal wins are paid, symbols inside this pattern transform into one random symbol. Then, they are paid from left to right regardless of whether they are on an actual payline or not; plus the win will be multiplied randomly from 1x - 10x.
To enter the bonus round, you need to hit 3, 4, or 5 Scatters, which grants 8 free spins and a 2x, 10x, or 50x prize respectively. Shape Wins happen a lot more often during the free spins and the multiplier values are collected into a general multiplier that will apply to Shape Wins in the future. Each subsequent Shape Win adds 1x into the multiplier and every Scatter that lands awards 1 extra spin. Finally, there’s a Bonus Buy option that lets players pay 85x to immediately trigger the bonus.
Roshtein’s Take
Secret City Gold has a lot of potential but the way the slot plays out, it could be a lot more satisfying. They did a good job with the amazing visuals of colorful Aztec-inspired images and the Shape Wins is a refreshing, out-of-the-box feature.
But one thing that’s holding the game back for me is that in the bonus. The Shape Wins multipliers only increase the overall multiplier by 1. With just 8 free spins to start, it seems like not much chance to pile them up and get some crazy big multiplier.