Aztec Gems Deluxe Slot – Free Demo

Stone, gold and a three by three

The first thing the Money Respin does is clear the board: the gems fade, the reels behind the locked symbols become strips of Money symbols and blanks, and the symbols that triggered the round stay put with their values showing. Pragmatic Play have a lengthy string of jackpot-carrying launches behind them, and now and then they're also known to return to a slot that succeeded and expand it again. The one being expanded here is Aztec Gems from 2018, which ran the same 3x3 grid on 5 paylines rather than 9, and the same word Deluxe did the same job on Pirate Gold Deluxe in 2020, where it meant a Money-symbol respin round bolted onto an earlier game.

A few remarks about the theme might be in order, if the phrase 'three by three' means nothing to you, and Aztec Gems Deluxe clothes a classic reel set in stone and gold. Four jackpot totals sit in a row above the reels: Mini, Minor, Major and Grand. Cut gems in red, purple, green, blue and yellow do the job the fruits would once have done. An Aztec mask watches over the top of the paytable. 243 credits is the game's maximum bet, and it is the panel every figure here was read on. It's a fairly simple premise, but popular. It works surprisingly well to power a slot.

Nine fixed lines and nothing that falls twice

What also helps power things is the compact machinery underneath, which brings with it 3 reels with 3 rows on each, and 9 fixed paylines that pay left to right from the leftmost reel on neighbouring reels. Only the highest combination on a line is paid, and separate lines that pay on the same spin are added together. There is no cascade here. A respin round's total is added to whatever the paylines paid on the spin that started it. What falls is what pays, on one spin.

The mask pays, the mask substitutes

The symbols that compose the paytable are the gems themselves, and in ascending order Pragmatic has drawn the yellow triangle, then blue, green, purple and red. Three yellow triangles pay 0.89 times the stake, three blue 2.00 and three green 3.11. There's even a payout for any red and purple combination. That mix returns 1.11 times the stake. Red is the highest paying standard symbol. Purple is the rung below it, at 6.44 times the stake. 3 of a kind return 9.78 times the stake. All of them need three to form a winning combo. The wild symbol is on hand to assist with this.

The wild is the Aztec mask. Because of that one exception, a wild never helps a spin reach the four Money symbols the respin needs. It appears on all reels, can substitute for any standard pay symbol except the Money symbol, and it's also the highest payer in its own right, with 3 wilds returning 27.78 times the stake. The paytable also notifies players of an RTP of 96.5%.

How the respin counter finds its way back to three

Aztec Gems Deluxe restricts things to one, when it comes to features, and along with the line wins comes the Money symbol. There are no free spins anywhere in this game. It shows on all reels. Every spin it carries a cash value taken from a predefined set the rules do not list, or the Mini or Minor jackpot value. Only those two jackpots can ride on a symbol; the Major and the Grand come from the wheel alone.

Things intensify when four or more of them get involved, and four or more Money symbols activate the Money Respin. The line wins for the triggering spin are paid out before any of it starts. The triggering symbols lock. In the round I watched, four of them locked and the counter opened on 3. The reels are replaced by reels of Money symbols and blanks, the round begins with 3 respins, and any respin that delivers at least one Money symbol resets the count back to 3. That counter ran 3, 2, 1 with nothing landing, and then a Money symbol stuck and it read 3 again.

1 / 2

The round concludes when the respins run out or the screen fills. The one I watched ended on the respins, with seven symbols held and two positions still empty. All the Money values on screen are then collected and paid as one total. Those seven read 1,566, 756, 756, 135, 486, 2,916 and 486 credits, and the banner paid 7,101.

One random additional feature fires, if every position is occupied at the close of the round, and there are 2 of them:

• Multiplier – the round's sum is multiplied by 2x, 3x, 5x, 8x or 10x.
• Wheel of Fortune – one more award is added on top, either 18x, 28x, 58x, 88x, 108x, 128x, 188x, 288x or 388x of total bet, or the Mini, Minor, Major or Grand jackpot.

Four jackpot totals above the reels

Those jackpots read Grand 243,000, Major 121,500, Minor 60,750 and Mini 24,300 credits. That is at the 243-credit bet the panel was recorded on. Against that bet they work out at 1,000x, 500x, 250x and 100x of the stake.

There is no Bonus Buy choice here. So the respins have to be waited for.

One Money Respin in 490 spins

There is only the one feature for players to toy with on the bonus side. It took its time, and across 490 spins the Money Respin arrived once, on spin 17. The balance went from 97,521.40 to 108,286.30 on that spin. 3 respins occurred there and paid 10,935 credits at a stake of 243 - 45x, and 4% of everything the session won. The base game added 72.90 on the same spin, for a spin total of 11,007.90. The rest of the log reads: 123 paying spins out of 490, 69 of them beneath the stake, a 17-spin drought without a win, a low of 56,624.50 credits. The drought broke on spin 290, and the only other wins above 2,000 credits were 4,617 on spin 433 and 2,673 on each of spins 78 and 303. Then spin 387 returned 180,792 credits, or 744x, which lifted the whole run to a 205% return. The balance peaked at 237,173.50 immediately after it.

Minty’s Closing Thought: One Money Respin across 490 spins, paying 45 times the stake, and the board never filled — so the Multiplier and the Wheel of Fortune that sit behind a full screen never showed up at all. A second run would be aimed at exactly that: what nine locked Money symbols actually hand over.