Golden Glyph 2 Slot – Free Demo

Clusters of five on a seven-by-seven grid

Golden Glyph 2 is the outcome of Quickspin revisiting one of its own concepts, and if you identify the game, it's because it's a follow-up. The Egyptian theme is still present. So they didn't wander too far from the original mood, and as the name implies, Golden Glyph 2 has a tomb-and-hieroglyph theme with abundant gold in it, while the backdrop is fashioned out of a desert valley with two obelisks and a camel rider crossing it. The grid sits inside a gold temple frame.

Golden Glyph 2 is a 7x7 grid slot with cluster pays. Wins come from adjacently connected symbols, so a cluster can run in any direction as long as the symbols touch. It launched on June 8, 2021, and the game pays clusters of 5 or more identical symbols. The paytable is banded from 5 upwards: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and then 15 or more. The Tumbling Reels mechanics clears each winning cluster and drops fresh symbols in. Tumbling carries on for as long as each drop makes a new cluster, and every tumble win is added to the spin's total. This means one spin can keep paying several times over.

Where the 150x sits on the paytable

The most lucrative standard symbol grants a 150x win for a cluster of 15 or more, and that is the largest single figure the paytable carries. Those figures are printed at a total bet of 1.00, and the paytable rescales with the bet you have set. Only the largest win per symbol cluster is paid. There's nothing to total up yourself.

There is, of course, also a Wild symbol that does its customary job. It stands in for everything except the Power Glyph, the Gigantic Wild, the Golden Glyph Wild and the Bonus Scatter. A bonus triggering symbol arrives in the form of a Bonus Scatter as well. No wild of any kind substitutes for it.

Seven Power-Ups queued under the grid

If you've ever tried the first Golden Glyph, then you've already seen this before, and if not, you will probably notice the Power Glyph. It turns up in the base game and in the free spins alike. The Power Glyph lands in a winning spot. It is only awarded when a spin produces a winning cluster, so a spin that pays nothing queues nothing. Clearing it triggers the next Power-Up in the queue. The next Power-Up fires once the tumbling has stopped and no winning clusters are left.

More significantly, each spin holds 7 Power-Ups: 6 random ones, either a Golden Scarab or one of the 6 Patterns of Horus. A strip under the grid shows the icons of the Power-Ups still to come. The 7th is the Gigantic Wild in the base game, and the Golden Scarab generates 4 to 11 Wilds. Two of the frames here are the same base-game spin before and after a Scarab fires, with a row of fresh Wilds on the grid in the second. The Patterns of Horus clears symbols in one of 6 forms (Cross, Ankh, Bird, Eye, Hourglass, Snake). Whatever it removes is refilled by the tumble, which can form new clusters. The Gigantic Wild is a 2-tall, 3-wide wild. It substitutes for everything except the Wild, the Power Glyph, the Golden Glyph Wild and the Bonus Scatter.

1 / 2

Three scatters in, or the price of skipping them

Landing 3 Bonus Scatters anywhere on the grid in the main game launches the Golden Free Spins Bonus. It grants 7 free spins, and landing 3 further Bonus Scatters at the close of a spin grants 5 extra free spins.

For those who don't wish to wait, there is a Buy Feature at 50x, 150x and 275x the bet. Each level opens the same 7 free spins, and the price only changes how many Golden Glyph Wilds are on the grid when the round starts. It purchases entry with 1, 2 or 3 Golden Glyph Wilds respectively. Quickspin's Golden Glyph 3 (2023), from the same 7-reel family, and Beastwood (2022) both sell entry into their bonus rounds in the same way.

The Golden Glyph Wild counts up to 50

A Golden Glyph Wild is granted on the first free spin, and it remains for the entire round and shifts to a random spot between spins. It does not tumble and is not cleared after a win, so it holds its place while everything around it drops. It is a multiplier wild. Any win it takes part in is multiplied by the figure shown on it. It begins at 1 and gains +1 for every tumble it wins in, up to a maximum of 50, and the 7th Power-Up in the bonus is the Golden Glyph itself, contributing more of them up to 4. If four are already on the grid, that Power-Up hands out an extra spin instead. Several of them combine their multipliers together. During the round the Win field shows only the current spin, while Total Win carries the running total for the bonus.

Minty Slots Verdict: The counting wild lives entirely inside the free spins, and I got that round open once in 350 spins: 7 free spins, no retrigger, 408.00 back on a 6.00 stake. The base game has the Power Glyph queue to keep it moving and a Gigantic Wild at the end of it, but nothing out there climbs.

One bonus across 350 spins

What the makers did here was to take the old game. They handed the free spins a multiplier wild that can rise to 50, and the theoretical RTP is 96.09% in the base game. The frames in this review all come from the test run below, at a 6.00 stake.

The added potential doesn't mean that your odds of leaving the slot in profit have risen; in fact, it has probably become tougher as is normally the case when volatility is raised. Testing the game for this review I had a lot of difficulty triggering the bonus. 350 spins at a 6.00 stake returned 904.80 of the 2,100.00 wagered, a session return of 43.1%, and the balance never once climbed above the 5,000.00 I began with, while only 60 spins paid anything at all. The low point was 3,790.40, and the balance finished at 3,804.80. 33 of those paid less than the stake, with one run of 28 spins in a row yielding nothing. That run ended on spin 338, twelve spins from the end of the session. The lone bonus arrived on spin 147. The balance went from 4,322.00 to 4,724.00 across that spin. It delivered 7 free spins with no retrigger, and paid 408.00, or 68x the stake — 45% of everything I won all session. Outside it, the best single spin of the session was 50.40 on spin 299, 8.4 times the stake.