Queen of the Nile Slot – Free Demo

What the golden scarab does to a line

Queen of the Nile is a plain and fairly straightforward 5-reel, 15-payline slot from Popiplay, and what you're viewing here is a very volatile game with considerable sting. All 15 lines are fixed and pay from left to right.

At the heart of Queen of the Nile are the x2 to x32 multiplier wilds. Only the highest win on a line is paid, and wins on different lines are added together. They come to extra use in the free spins bonus, where winning symbols lock in position whenever they land on a payline. Free spins are played at the same bet and on the same lines as the spin that triggered them.

Anubis at x4 on spin 181

The reels are ruled by stylised playing cards from Js to Aces. Three of any letter pays 1x the stake, and 33 of my paying spins returned exactly that. The higher-paying symbols arrive in the shape of scarabs, an explorer, a man in a bowler hat, a mummy and Anubis, while the Queen is the leader of this group and returns 75 times your stake if you hit 5 on a payline. Anubis follows at 25x for five, then the mummy at 20x and the man in the bowler hat at 15x.

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More significant still is the golden winged scarab wild symbol: the wilds land on any reel and arrive with a multiplier of 2x. It substitutes for every symbol except the Scatter and also pays on its own, from 10x the stake for three up to 75x for five. It doubles with each additional wild on the line. On spin 181, two Wilds put five Anubis at x4 for 100x, while a second line of four Anubis with one Wild paid 14x at x2, for 114x in all. This means they can combine to multiply your payline wins by up to 32x

Our Minty Verdict: Everything I saw this game do happened in the base game, and the Wild multiplier carried most of it: two Wilds took five Anubis to 100x the stake on spin 181, and that one spin paid 171.00 of the 465.00 credits the session returned.

Scatter rings and the Respin lock

Keep an eye out for the golden scarab ring symbol, because if 3 or more land at once, the free spins bonus is triggered. The Scatter has no payout of its own in the paytable. The smallest count you can begin with is 10, the largest 20. Four Scatters sit between the two with 15 free spins.

In the free spins bonus, any winning symbols that land on the reels will stay stuck in position. The rules call this the Respin feature, and any win during free spins sets it off. The remainder respin until no fresh winning symbols stick. Collecting 3 Scatters during the Respin feature is the only retrigger the rules describe, and it adds 10 free spins.

Four hundred and seventy base-game spins

There's truly not a whole heap to Queen of the Nile. The Buy Bonus offers three bonus games that differ in hit rate and bring up to 4, up to 3 or up to 2 Wilds. Functionally, it's online slots play in the cleanest shape, if there ever was one - basic, volatile and with promise that will keep you on your toes. I wagered 705.00 and won 465.00, leaving the balance at 760.00 for a session return of 66.0%.

There are no irritating oddities that I could spot at least; however, I didn't trigger the free spins once in 470 spins. Only 64 of those 470 spins paid anything, and the longest run without a win lasted 25 spins, ending on spin 62.

I quite liked Queen of the Nile. Ninja Frog is another Popiplay slot, and Golden Egypt is another Egyptian-themed one. But I must also confess that I have a weakness for multiplier wilds in conjunction with high volatility in particular, and anyone who has ever hit a wild line will probably concur that it's one of the finest moments you can savour when wagering. My second-largest win came on spin 468, where five men in bowler hats with one Wild paid 30x at x2 and a second line added 3x. When you hit and lock them bad lads on winning paylines with lots of free spins to go, it truly seems like you're plundering the house.