Eye of Medusa: Slot Overview
She might be a fearsome character, but the infamous Gorgon Medusa has experienced something of a renaissance moment in the online gambling world, and the snake-haired lady is a regular on the slot scene. Software provider Hacksaw Gaming is another studio that has built a slot around the Ancient Greek mythological entity. In Eye of Medusa, the titular character doesn’t turn people to stone, but instead, she can petrify symbols and stack them at the bottom of the grid before applying a multiplier to revealed values. If you’re in a bold mood, feel free to join us as we figure out whether turning things to stone has never been so good, or run while you still can…
Adventuring into Medusa’s domain would have been absolutely terrifying, but if there is anything Eye of Medusa is not, it’s terrifying. It’s actually quite tame looking, for better or for worse, having neither the borderline comically cartoonish visuals nor the gritty, a bit scary appearance Hacksaw Gaming slots often possess. On one side of the screen, we’ve got Perseus, while on the other is Medusa, who might have snakes, but she’s not as infested with them as usual. It’s a fine enough view, the graphical quality has a vaguely Asterix, Ancient World feel to it, which is pleasant, but Eye of Medusa didn’t evoke a major emotional response either way after an initial inspection.
A 5×5 grid is where Eye of Medusa’s symbol action takes place, creating winning combinations from the leftmost side across where there are 3,125 ways to win. Clicking the up or down arrows is how players can select a wager of 10 c to $/€100, and at most, the RTP clocks in at 96.2% while the math model volatility is medium.
From the lowest value symbols on up, we find 10-A card ranks and five higher-paying character symbols. Hitting a line of five-of-a-kind pays 0.3x to 0.5x when made up of royals or 0.8x to 4x when formed of premium symbols.
Eye of Medusa: Slot Features
The features in Eye of Medusa are super cascades, Medusa symbols, Petrified symbols, a Snakes & Stones bonus, a Gorgon’s Gold bonus, and feature buys.
Super Cascades
Super cascades remove winning symbols and all regular pay symbols of the same type as the winning combination from the reels, dropping new symbols into the empty spaces.
Medusa Symbols
Medusa symbols are wild, substituting all regular paying symbols, and they land in either Silver or Gold form. When a low pay symbol win occurs while a Medusa is on the grid, the Medusa symbol drops to the bottom of the reels, where it remains till the end of the spin. All other non-Petrified symbols are removed and new ones drop in to fill the empty spaces. This continues till no more wins occur.
Petrified Symbols
When a high-pay win lands with a Medusa symbol, the winning symbols and Medusa turn to stone and drop to the bottom of the grid. Everything else is cleared, and new symbols fall. Once the chain ends, each Petrified symbol reveals a value – Bronze (0.2x–4x), Silver (5x–20x), or Gold (25x–500x). Then Medusa steps in. Silver Medusa multiplies the total by 1x–4x, Gold by 5x–20x. Petrified symbol values are added together, multiplied by the Medusa Multiplier, then the total is awarded.
Snakes & Stones
10 or 12 Snakes & Stones free spins are awarded when 3 or 4 FS scatters, respectively, land in the base game. This feature has an increased chance of landing Medusa symbols with higher multipliers. Additionally, during this bonus and the next, hitting 2 or 3 scatters awards an extra +2 or +4 free spins, respectively.
Gorgon’s Gold
Hitting 5 scatters in the base game triggers 12 free spins in the Gorgon’s Gold bonus. In this feature, when a Medusa symbol activates, its multiplier becomes the minimum for all future Medusa symbols. If a higher multiplier value appears, the minimum is updated.
Feature Buy
The feature buy section offers BonusHunt FeatureSpins for 3x the bet to make each spin 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus game. At 50x the bet, players can buy a spin that guarantees 1 Medusa symbol and a minimum of 1x on the Petrified symbols. Snakes & Stones can be bought for 100x or Gorgon’s Gold for 200x.
Eye of Medusa: Slot Verdict
There was something very familiar about Eye of Medusa, but if it is a reskin, the original slot dwelt just out of conscious memory, like a dream which fades on waking, only to leave a ghostly impression that the mind just cannot grasp. Never mind, on with the Medusa show. One clever thing about it is the way Hacksaw Gaming has intertwined the classic myth with the actual gaming mechanics. For example, the way Medusa symbols turn winning premiums to stone creating Petrified symbols which stack at the bottom of the reels. The bigger the stack, the better, before values are revealed by each Petrified symbol, and Medusa multiplies the total winning value.
For a studio famous for leaning heavily on things like wild multipliers or wild multiplier reels to enhance line wins, this system is relatively novel. A ways to win mechanism helps pull in winning high-pay symbols, and the fact any high-pay type can be Petrified, meaning more than one type per spin is permissible, is also a positive factor in loading reels with Petrified symbols. It also helped that when the BonusHunt FeatureSpins were activated, bonus games triggered at a fairly high frequency. When thinking out loud, the game could have done with one more even higher free spins round. Adding the highest achieved multiplier to new Medusa symbols is fine, but if there had been a hidden bonus, perhaps where Medusa multipliers were added to a persistent total multiplier, which then got applied to new Medusa symbols might have been interesting.
Dreams are free, and as it happens, Eye of Medusa can petrify wins up to a cap of 10,000x the stake using what it has to work with anyway, which is no mean feat. By the end, Eye of Medusa felt a little lacking when compared to Hacksaw Gaming’s premier titles, but it’s able to whip out a few cunning antics should lucky players be able to get the Gorgon on their side.
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