Pyramid Valley: Power Zones Slot – Free Demo

230 spins for one Free Games round

Pyramid Valley: Power Zones was first released in 2021. Despite having been available for years, I couldn't seem to locate any remarkable wins while testing the game. My run was 230 spins at a 10.00 stake, and 61 of them paid anything at all. This of course doesn't mean it has never occurred. Of those 61 paying spins, 31 returned less than the stake that bought them. The best I achieved myself over 230 spins was 631x the stake, on a slot that is promoted as having a 5,000x max win potential. That one spin took the balance from 8,740.00 to 15,040.00 credits, the low point and the peak of the session in a single result.

Pyramid Valley: Power Zones is a 6-reel, 5-row slot with 15,625 ways to win, and it has an Egyptian theme showcasing scarabs creeping across the reels. Playtech has run the same ways-to-win arithmetic on Buffalo Blitz and dressed the sand and gold up again on Sahara Riches Megaways Cash Collect. Wins need 3 or more matching symbols on consecutive reels, counted from the leftmost reel rightwards. Wins are multiplied by the coin value, which is the total bet divided by 40.

The wild stops at the golden pyramid

Symbols on the reels comprise a wild. The paying symbols rank from the Scarab and the Eye of Horus at the top, through the Ankh, blue snake, green falcon and purple idol, down to the card ranks. It substitutes for everything except the Bonus symbol. So a wild can finish a line of any paying symbol, but never help toward a trigger. There is also a Charged Symbol that locks Power Zones and triggers the feature, and a Bonus symbol that activates the free games rather than paying on its own. Bonus symbols count from anywhere on the reels rather than from consecutive ones.

There are plenty of Bonus symbols on the reels. In my session the trigger arrived once in 230 spins, on spin 223. These of course can produce the bonus game, but more often than not they're just obstructing potential wins.

Scarabs that make more scarabs

A Charged Symbol locks Power Zones and triggers the feature, and each zone may extend its trail by one position each spin. The expansion can go to any position around the zone, so a trail is not committed to one direction. When a Charged Symbol lands on a zone, it converts all of that zone's symbols to a single kind. After that the zone is eliminated. In the base game, at least; inside the Free Games the zones stay where they are after a transform. Trails can also divide under Scarab Strike. A split leaves more than one trail running at the same time. Any Scarab can randomly generate 1 or 2 new Scarabs, which lock new positions and begin new trails of their own.

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Our Minty Verdict: The 6,310.00 credits that came out of spin 223 were 86% of everything 230 spins returned, which leaves 1,028.00 credits spread across the other 60 paying spins against 2,300.00 staked. The base game's job here is to keep a trail or two alive until three Bonus symbols turn up.

Thirty free games and the Mega Spin at the end

Landing 3 or more Bonus symbols activates the Free Games feature. 3 Bonus symbols award 10 free games, 4 pay 15, 5 pay 20 and 6 pay 30. A round of 30 free games therefore arrives from six Bonus symbols, from retriggers, or from the largest of the buy options. The round can be retriggered for another 3 to 30 on top, and all Bonus positions lock as Power Zones at the beginning. The smallest retrigger needs only 2 Bonus symbols and adds 3 free games. The zones don't reset during the round. Locked positions accumulate across the round instead of clearing each time a Charged Symbol transforms one. On the final free game a Mega Spin turns every Power Zone into a mystery symbol, and the feature can also be purchased outright at 10, 15, 20 or 30 free games plus the Mega Spin, or gambled for a random count of free games and Mega Spins.

What the run looked like around spin 223

My own session finally dropped the bonus on spin 223: 15 free games, retriggered, worth 6,310.00 credits at a 10.00 stake, or 631x. It was the only Free Games round in the whole run. That was 86% of everything I won across the entire session. Across 230 spins I wagered 2,300.00 and won back 7,338.00, taking a balance of 10,000.00 to 15,038.00 credits.

Despite the demonstrated potential, I'm not a big fan of the wait, personally. Outside spin 223, the best single result was 210.00 credits on spin 23, 21x the stake. The 16 dead spins that ended on spin 211 are a fair picture of what most of the session looked like.