The Queen's Curse: Empire Treasures Slot by Playtech

The Queen's Curse is a dark twist on fairy-tale slots, its 5x4 reels floating over a misty valley with a ruined castle and waterfalls. The star is a green-skinned, green-eyed evil queen who lands as a tall stacked symbol, joined by a blonde princess and a red-hooded huntress, with royal regalia, a crown, an orb and sceptre, a flaming shield, and gem royals below. A silver W is the wild. It's a Playtech game from the Vikings studio, part of the Empire Treasures jackpot range, and it's built around variety rather than one big feature.

In the base game alone there are three things to watch for. A fully stacked princess landing on both outer reels triggers the Princess Re-Spins, which spin a reel set of nothing but princesses and blanks and keep respinning while more princesses land, filling the grid for up to a 1,000x win. Separately, a Queen feature can turn a winning combination into queen symbols, and a Mirror Wild feature can add extra wilds to the middle reels.

The Free Games give you a choice, which is unusual. Land two scatters on reels one and five and you pick one of three modes: Princess free games, where one symbol stacks fully each spin; Queen free games, where winning combos keep turning to queens for the rest of the round; or Mirror Wild free games, with wilds landing on the three middle reels. Each plays quite differently, and the round retriggers, adding 3 or 12 more spins for one or two scatters.

Four Empire Treasures progressives sit overhead, Grand, Major, Minor and Mini, the Grand seeding at 200,000, and they can trigger at random. As network progressives they read "Not available" in the free Playtech demo. The reel cap is a modest 1,000x, so the jackpots are the real top prize. With a solid 96.34% RTP and medium volatility, it's a well-featured dark slot whose three-way free-games pick makes the demo worth a proper look.