The Golden Owl Of Athena

The Golden Owl of Athena slot, available at BetSoft online casinos, offers players a good mix of graphics and gameplay. This title has a mid-level volatility thanks to a play style that centers a ton of value around one symbol in the form of multiple features and ways to get paid. This packs a bit more excitement than titles with a particularly low level of volatility, but it doesn't have the crazy swings that come along with titles that use a higher variance, so it strikes a nice balance between the extremes.

Format and Layout

The format used in this title has five vertical reels with three rows that extend horizontally across the game board. There are 10 paylines, which are fixed, so you can't change how many lines you're playing with on each spin. That's not a problem in terms of bet sizing, however, because you can bet between $0.01 and $1 per line, so the betting range spreads from $0.10 to $10 per turn. High stakes players will probably wish for some larger bet sizes, but this will affect only a small minority of people who might be interested in this title.

Wild Owl Symbols

The owl from the name of this slot is the centerpiece of the whole game, and it starts off as a wild symbol in all game modes. It will help players to hit wins on its own, but it doesn't have its own regular payline wins. Along these lines, five of a kind on a payline will award you 500x. You can also get 100x for four, 10x for three and 1x for just two of a kind. These are up there with the best regular symbol payline-based wins that there are in this game, so they're obviously a strong source of value.

Scatter Payouts

However, this isn't the only way that the wild golden owl symbols pay you. You can also get paid with scatter wins, which are calculated separately from the line bet prizes noted above. Five of a kind awards players 200x, which is a pretty sizable win on its own. You can also earn 20x for four of this wild anywhere on the game board, and the payout for three of a kind as a scatter is 2x. These are reasonable wins, but what's great is that they're added to any payline-based prizes that you can get at the same time, so five of a kind on a payline actually gives you 700x total (500x payline win plus 200x scatter prize).

Free Spins Bonus Round

Whenever you land at least three of these wilds on the reels at once, you'll be given a free spins bonus feature. The number of free turns that you get depends on how many owls you used to trigger the bonus round. Three of a kind gets eight free spins, four gives you 12 and five earns 20.

During the free spins bonus feature, one of the symbols will be randomly chosen in the bottom-left corner. If enough of those appear on the reels, then they will expand to give you tons of chances at more wins.

You should also know that you can activate the free spins feature at any time in this game. You can purchase a set of 20 free spins with this random expanding symbol feature for a cost of 93x the size of your current wager. You're not obligated to ever use this option, but it's cool to have it there for players who are interested in that sort of thing, especially if you go a while without having it triggered.

Other Payouts and Prizes

There are three main tiers of symbols in this game outside of the golden owl. Athena herself pays 500x for five of a kind, and you can earn 200x for five of the temple. Players also have a shot at a 200x win for five of the tree symbols. These three make up the high-level wins, and they can all pay for two of a kind or more.

At the medium level, you'll get 75x for five of the spear tip, the helmet or the vase. All three of these symbols also pay for just two or more on a payline.

Finally, you have the bottom level of payouts, which centers around four card rank symbols. For the purple A or blue K, five of a kind is worth 15x. Otherwise, a 10x win is yours for five of a kind combos of the green Q or blue J symbols.

Overview

BetSoft did a great job with The Golden Owl of Athena slot. While all of the features center around one symbol, the volatility is kept from getting too far out of hand by a balanced pay table with lots of two of a kind wins available.