Gates of Olympus Slot Review

If you've ever played Sweet Bonanza, Pragmatic Play's Gates of Olympus (released back in 2021) will feel instantly familiar. It runs on the same tumbling, pay-anywhere mechanic, with Greek gods where Sweet Bonanza has candy. The biggest difference, though, is how it handles multipliers during the free spins: it actually lets you build up a running total, which makes a huge difference.

Getting into the bonus round takes four scatters, or you can just buy it for 100x your bet. (There's also a Double Chance to Win Feature ante that costs 25% more to put extra scatters on the reels, though it disables the bonus buy). Once you're in, you get 15 free spins on the 6x5 grid, and this is where Zeus starts dropping multiplier orbs worth anywhere up to 500x.

But here is where the game gets a bit polarizing: the multiplier meter has two very strict rules. First, an orb only gets added to your running total if it lands on a spin that actually wins. Second, and this is the frustrating part: your stored multiplier only applies to a win if a new orb lands on that specific spin.

I bought the bonus, and those two rules completely dictated my experience. Early on, a 2x orb landed on a win, which started my meter. But over the next dozen spins, it was honestly a bit painful to watch. Several high-value orbs (totaling 19x) landed on dead spins and just vanished. I also had a few decent winning tumbles that paid out peanuts because no new orb dropped to trigger my stored multiplier.

Just as I was writing the round off, the stars finally aligned. On a single spin, four orbs dropped during a winning tumble, bumping my meter to 14x and paying out 108x my stake in one shot. I walked away with a 130x return on my buy, but it really showed how lopsided a single round can be. You can build up a beautiful multiplier, but for most of the round, you might still just be getting paid basic tumble values.

Looking at the bigger picture, Gates adds a running multiplier that Sweet Bonanza does not have. It pays for that with the top prize: 5,000x here against Sweet Bonanza's over 21,000x.

Since then, Gates of Olympus has become the foundation for a massive franchise, and almost every sequel tries to one-up the original. If you find the 5,000x cap too low, Gates of Olympus 1000 keeps the same 6x5 board and 96.50% but triples the max win to 15,000x, while the Super Scatter version pushes the max win to 50,000x. They even made a version (Gates of Olympus 2500) with a super-premium 1,250x bonus buy that completely removes that frustrating "winning spin" rule, letting every single orb add to your total.

Other studios run the same kind of meter, sometimes in a more forgiving way. Popok Gaming's Fortune Empire, for example, has the same 2x to 500x orbs, 100x buy and 5,000x cap, but lets every orb build the meter, win or lose.

The original Gates of Olympus is a classic for a reason, but it's a game defined just as much by what it throws away as what it pays out. It's a medium-volatility slot that still demands patience, and a bit of luck to get a fresh orb on a winning board, before it finally decides to hand over the goods.