Designers at International Game Technology (IGT) have paid a great deal of attention to the visual appeal of their Pharaoh’s Fortune digital slots game. The icons are rendered in a riot of bright jewel colours, and while they are static on the spinning reels, any matching symbols that come to rest on a winning bet line come alive immediately in quirky animations.
The music is a cheerful rendition of the Bananarama hit Walk Like An Egyptian, complete with vocals during the bonus rounds. Pharaoh’s Fortune plays on five reels and three rows, with 15 bet lines in regular play. All wins require three or more matching symbols (two or more, in the case of Wilds) in consecutive spots on a bet line, beginning on Reel 1.
All Symbols are Theme-Related
While many slots games use poker symbols as their lower-scoring icons, Pharaoh’s Fortune pokie carries the Egyptian theme through the game. The four lower-value symbols are hieroglyphics, featuring an Owl, a Dog, a Serpent and the Eye of Horus, while the five higher-value symbols feature Egyptian kings and queens, as well as gods and goddesses like Horus, Isis and Anubis. The lowest wins are 5X the line bet (for three owls or dogs), and the highest win on the regular symbols, for five-of-a-kind Horus icons, is 1,000X the bet.
A Pyramid inscribed with the Pharaoh’s Fortune game logo is the Wild symbol; two consecutive Wilds starting at Reel 1 on a bet line score 50X the bet, while five Wilds will win 10,000X the stake.
Wilds also substitute for all other symbols except the Scatter Symbol and the Pharaoh’s Fortune Bonus, so one Wild at the junction of a number of bet lines can turn several runs of different icons into winning sequences simultaneously. The Scatter Bonus is a Scarab bearing the solar disc of Ra, and two or more Scatter Symbols in any position on the reels scores a win: from 2X the bet for two Scarabs, up to 50X for five of them.
Pharaoh’s Fortune Bonus Feature
Unlike most slots game, the Scatter Symbol does not trigger bonus games in Pharaoh’s Fortune. That role is played by the Pharaoh’s Fortune Bonus icon: the mask of Tutankhamen reimagined with a broad grin.
Three Bonus icons on the same bet line trigger three Free Spins with an initial 1X multiplier, with 20 bet lines to give even more winning possibilities. However, the start of a Bonus round triggers another detailed animation: the player is faced with a series of stone blocks, and must choose blocks one at a time.
Each block will either add +1 to the number of free spins, or add +1 to the Bonus multiplier, or trigger the start of the free spins. Obviously, online or mobile pokies for real money player must try to choose as many blocks as possible to enhance the value of the round before triggering the free spins; the number of free spins can increase to a maximum of 25, with a maximum 6X multiplier. If three Bonus icons appear in any position on Reels 1, 2 and 3 during free spins, the player gets additional free spins equivalent to the total at the start of the round. The Bonus rounds also use an entirely new set of icons, all of them based on Egyptian hieroglyphics, and at least one winning combination is guaranteed on every spin.
A new Wild and a new Scatter symbol also feature in Bonus rounds, and the Bonus Scatters increase win multipliers even more right here.
