Lost Relics Slot – Free Demo

What 450 Spins of Lost Relics Paid

NetEnt is a Swedish software studio. It's been creating games for both land-based and online casinos for well over a decade, and that's quite a feat considering how seldom they wander from the same handful of themes. I gave this one 450 spins at a flat 1.00 stake, which is 450.00 wagered. With excessive time on my hands, and nothing else queued up behind it, I resolved to give their slot Lost Relics a go, though I've had plenty of reasons to assess a NetEnt slot before. The balance started at 1,000.00 and finished at 1,688.45.

Lost Relics is a 5-reel, 5-row slot with Cluster Pays, 96.30% RTP and a bet level spanning from €0.20 to €400, and it's a basic slot that no one would suppose was made in 2018 judging by the retro-looking graphics. The studio also publishes a hit frequency of 20.00%, and 117 of my 450 spins paid something, which is 26%. This is a Free Spins slot. One Free Spins round turned up across those 450 spins, on spin 213. It comes with a couple of features which I will examine further below, but the game doesn't truly need an instruction manual to be honest. Of the 117 paying spins, 71 gave back less than the 1.00 stake, and the balance bottomed out at 796.85 before it recovered.

Clusters of 6 or more identical symbols adjoining horizontally or vertically pay. Five adjacent symbols pay nothing at all, however neatly they fall. Distinct clusters of the same symbol pay individually, and the most helpful symbol of all however is the Wild, which substitutes for everything except the Scatter. Up to five random features can trigger on a winning spin, so it should be feasible to pile extras onto a single cluster. The features only fire on a spin that has already won, and my longest run without a win was 13 spins, ending on spin 271.

Coin Wins, Extra Wilds and the Hidden Chest

Concealed under the symbols of a winning cluster, up to five occurrences of three features, in any combination, may trigger on any winning spin after the reels halt and before wins are paid. Coin Win grants 3x to 30x the bet on a winning symbol, and Extra Wild drops three extra Wilds randomly in spaces outside the winning cluster. A coin win therefore lands on a symbol in a cluster that has already been paid for. Extra Scatter grants an extra Scatter on a winning symbol. Collect 3 Scatters in the main game and 10 Free Spins are granted.

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During Free Spins a Hidden Chest rests behind the reels covering several spaces, and winning clusters reveal the spaces under them. Chests come in small, medium and large, and the first two of a round are always small or medium. Revealed spaces persist between spins. A chest that is never fully uncovered pays nothing, and a Sticky Wild from one that is holds its position until the round ends. A fully revealed chest awards a random mix of Extra Free Spins, Sticky Wild and Coin Win worth 1x to 30x the bet, and after each chest the spaces clear and a fresh chest is concealed.

Is Lost Relics Worth the Dig

Lost Relics is a drab slot in most ways possible, and the graphics are extremely dreary. Cluster pays is not its own invention either, and Honey Rush and LeoVegas Cluster Gems run the same format. The Free Spins round has been overworked by this point. My one round of it ran its ten spins without any extension. The payouts did perform over my 450 spins though: 1,138.45 back on 450.00 wagered, a 253% return, with a single spin striking the 900x max win and the ten Free Spins themselves adding 14.20, about 1% of everything won.

Minty’s Expert Conclusion: A 253% return over 450 spins reads well until you notice where it came from — one spin at the 900x max win, and almost nothing else. Strip that spin out and the other 449 handed back 238.45 on 449.00 staked. The Free Spins round I did draw contributed 14.20, roughly 1% of the take. That is a game with its entire payout crammed into a single event, and a 20.00% published hit frequency doing very little to soften the wait.