The Sword and the Grail Excalibur Slot by Play'n GO

From 10,000x to 25,000x

Play'n GO waited five years between The Sword and the Grail (2019) and this sequel. The original built a loyal following around its four-stage Sword Meter - a progressive multiplier system that topped out at x100 wilds on a 5x3, 20-payline grid. Excalibur keeps that exact chassis. Same grid, same paylines, same four multiplier stages. What changed: the max win jumped from 10,000x to 25,000x, Wandering Wilds replaced standard wilds during free spins, and a new instant-prize mechanic called King's Prizes adds a secondary payout stream.

The setting shifts from the original's round-table chamber to a grander cathedral hall draped in crimson and purple banners. Character art got a visible upgrade too - King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Merlin all look sharper than their 2019 versions. The orchestral score hits hard, full of brass swells and clanking-sword effects that match the Arthurian atmosphere.

The Sword Meter's Four Stages

Everything revolves around the Sword Meter sitting above the reels. Collect Sword Scatters to fill it. Every 5 swords unlocks the next multiplier tier and adds 3 free spins to your round. The progression runs x2, x5, x10, x100. At each stage, any Grail Wild that lands (or already sits on the reels) carries that multiplier value.

The original had named ranks for each stage - Squire, Knight, Knight of the Round Table, King of Knights - with uneven collection requirements (3, 6, 5, and 7 swords). Excalibur flattens this to a uniform 5 per level. Simpler to understand, less narrative flavor. Five of a kind with x100 wilds pays 1,500x from a single payline.

Wilds That Wander Off the Reels

Free spins trigger with 3+ Sword Scatters, then a Round Table Wheel spins to set your starting conditions. The wheel creates a tradeoff: more initial spins means fewer starting scatters on your meter, and vice versa. You might get 12 spins with zero scatters collected, or 8 spins with 3-4 already banked.

Once the round starts, every Grail Wild that lands sticks around and moves one position in a random direction each spin. Multiple wilds all shift the same way. This is the game's marquee addition over the original, and it creates genuine tension - watching two or three x10 wilds drift across the grid while you chase that final multiplier upgrade.

The catch: these wilds wander off the edge of the reels and disappear. They're semi-sticky, not permanent. A wild that lands on reel 5 and drifts right is gone next spin. Frustrating when it happens at x10 or x100, and it happens more often than you'd want.

King's Prizes and the Payoff Math

King's Prizes are silver lion-head symbols carrying instant values of 1x, 2x, 3x, 5x, or 10x your stake. On their own, they're small. Combined with the Sword Meter, they scale fast. A 10x King's Prize at the x100 stage pays 1,000x from a single symbol landing. This mechanic fills the gaps between payline wins during free spins and gives the bonus round a pulse even on quiet spins.

Low-pay symbols are stylized card values on metallic coins (10 through Ace, paying 1x to 2x for five of a kind). High-pays are the four Arthurian characters, with King Arthur topping regular symbols at 15x for five. The Grail Wild matches Arthur's base value but becomes the game's engine once multipliers attach.

Five RTP Tiers, No Buy Bonus

Play'n GO offers operators five RTP configurations: 96.20%, 94.20%, 91.20%, 87.20%, and 84.20%. The default sits at 96.20% - slightly below the original's 96.53%. That gap is small but real, and the five-tier system means many casinos deploy the 94.20% version or lower.

There's no bonus buy option and no ante bet. Play'n GO has resisted both features across most of their catalog. For players who want direct access to free spins, that's a limitation. For everyone else, it means the base game needs to carry the experience on its own - and the random Sword Meter activations in base play do provide occasional multiplier wild hits to break up standard spins.

This is the twelfth game in Play'n GO's Arthurian Legend franchise, which spans 14+ titles including the Green Knight trilogy and Merlin saga. Within that franchise, Excalibur sits in the middle of the pack: Return of the Green Knight offers 40,000x and Clash of Camelot reaches 35,000x. Excalibur's 25,000x ceiling is respectable but not the series peak. Its strength is the Sword Meter system - a mechanic that's proven over five years and still creates better progressive tension than most competitors.