Age of the Gods Norse: Ways of Thunder Slot by Playtech

Every winning spin throws a lightning bolt at the grid. Some cells start locked under ice, dead space that pays nothing, and each win shatters a few of them open for the next go. Clear enough and the ways count climbs in steps: 45, then 135, 405, 675, 1,125, all the way to 3,125 if wins keep landing back to back. Break the chain and it resets to 45. So the whole base game is a run you're trying to extend, one connected win feeding the next.

Thor and the Midgard serpent Jormungandr arrive as tall stacked blocks, one to five cells high, so a single reel can fill top to bottom with the same god and pay the full connected ways down the row. The Mjolnir hammer marked W is the wild, standing in for everything but the gold bonus coin, and it lands in its own lightning burst carrying a pay value printed on the symbol. Around them sit a red chained Fenrir wolf, a blue stylised raven, a green carved gem, and rune-letter royals glowing orange, pink and purple.

The gold coins are the scatters, and enough of them open the free-games round with the Ways Boost already switched on and escalating through its own tiers toward that 3,125 ceiling. Retriggers are unlimited, which is the only route to the game's top figure, several times higher than anything the base game reaches on its own. No buy option, no ante bet, so the coins landing is the one way in.

The setting is a frozen mountain pass at a pink-mauve dusk, runestones and torches down one side, a lava forge glowing orange in the rock on the other, chunks of stone drifting past in the sky. Odin's grey-bearded face surfaces among the iced-over cells. Being a Norse entry in the Age of the Gods line, it carries the shared progressive jackpot that drops at random on any spin, though it drops the four-banner jackpot display the Greek titles put front and centre.