Convertus Aurum Slot – Free Demo

A Merkur cabinet with a Cauldron in it

Convertus Aurum only earns its name once the free games start and the Man wild clears the Royals off the reels. One of the most predictable aspects about Merkur is this. Whenever you launch a new slot, you know more or less what you're going to get, and it could be a fruit machine dressed in a new theme, or an old arcade format given another lap around the block. Convertus Aurum adds an alchemy theme to that frame and one bonus round to chase. Five reels, ten lines, a card gamble - the list of familiar ideas is lengthy, and you can't accuse the Germans of pursuing trends at the expense of their core audience, whatever your view may be of Merkur. This is a developer that keeps coming back to the same sturdy frame and hunting for small ways to make the format pay.

The above remark is just as true of Convertus Aurum. Symbol wins are multiplied by the credit bet, so the size of a line win moves with the stake and nothing else. The game takes its title from the practice of turning things into gold, and it takes you back to an era and place when alchemists toiled over their cauldrons. The promise of the game is a simple one: get the low-value symbols off the reels and the high-value ones on. Of my 368 spins at 5.00, 103 paid something back. It's also built to hold everything back for the feature, for better or worse, and throughout the session it builds the suspense as you wait for the Cauldrons to land.

The Cauldron ignores the lines

Convertus Aurum uses a simple 5-reel, 3-row grid with up to 10 paylines, like most Merkur games. Only the highest win is paid on each active line. You can fix the number of lines yourself rather than have the game do it for you, and wins are formed by combinations of a kind on neighbouring reels from the leftmost reel. The scattered Cauldron is the sole exception, as it pays in any position. Its wins are added to the line wins rather than replacing them. The theoretical RTP is 95.96%, and you can play Convertus Aurum from 1 cent to 20 per spin.

Symbols on the reels include the customary lower-value Royals alongside a set of Gold symbols. The Cauldron sits outside both groups as the scatter. The whole aim of the game is the conversion of the one into the other, and the Man is the wild. It shows up on reels 2, 3 and 4 only, substituting for everything except the Cauldron. With no wild on reels 1 and 5, a paying line has to begin with the symbol itself. There's also a gamble on offer, both the card version and the ladder version, on any win from 0.05. Collect Half halves the card-gamble stake or drops the ladder by one step, and books the saved amount as winnings.

What the Man does once the free games start

In Convertus Aurum, the base game has little in it beyond the wait: you spin, you line up your Royals and your Gold, and you wait. Four of the Gold bar on line 6 paid 20.00 at my 5.00 stake, with Royals still filling the reels around it and the balance at 910.00. In broad strokes, that's all there is to the base game. The best the base game managed across my 368 spins was 37.00 on spin 228, seven times the stake.

It all comes together in the Free Game Feature. Mine arrived once in 368 spins, on spin 29. This is played when 3, 4 or 5 Cauldron scatter symbols emerge in view at once, and it will grant you 10, 15 or 30 free games respectively. My trigger was the middle one, at 15 free games. Once in, the Man goes to work and transforms all the Royal symbols on the reels to Gold symbols for the duration. That is where the title of the game derives from. That run took the balance from 876.00 to 1,156.00. Moreover, if you land the Cauldrons again while the feature is running, another set of free games will be added to your count. No retrigger came in my 15.

Minty’s Final Note: One Free Game Feature in 368 spins carried 34% of everything I won, and the balance still finished at zero on a 45.7% return.

One trigger in 368 spins

Contrary to what you may be accustomed to, Convertus Aurum is a game where you very much do want to trigger the bonus early. Outside the feature, my best spins paid 35.00, 31.00 and 24.00 against a 5.00 stake. There is nothing else in it for you. The longest I went without a win of any size was 11 spins, ending on spin 125. Conversely, things do get momentarily heated when the Royals come off the reels and the Gold comes on.

Of course, there's always a chance that you'll run out of funds before triggering the bonus again. I started this one with 1,000.00. That can be quite a letdown if you've spent a lot of cash chasing the feature, and my own session made the point clearly. Of those 103 paying spins, 66 returned less than the 5.00 they cost. 368 spins at 5.00 a spin, one Free Game Feature on spin 29 that delivered 285.00, or 57 times the stake, and then nothing of the sort for the remaining 339 spins. The balance topped out at 1,156.00 straight after that bonus and ended at zero, with 840.00 won against 1,840.00 wagered. That is a return of 45.7%.

Convertus Aurum is an adequate slot, albeit not as generous as Eye of Horus or El Torero Raging Bull, and what you get is a fairly simple ten-line slot. But it is also one that can exasperate you to no end, given that the bonus frequency is slim. If, and when, you do trigger the bonus, it'd better be a fine one. Mine was the only thing keeping the session alive, at 34% of everything I won. Otherwise the uphill climb will look like a steep one.