Rome: The Golden Age

Veni, vidi, vici! Step into the ancient arena for an epic reel battle on the slot from NetEnt. Rome: The Golden Age is taking you back to the era of brave gladiators with wild substitutions, frame collection and transformation as well as increasing multipliers of up to x1,000 for the bonus game that can lead to wins of up to a lofty 100,000 times your bet.

Slot Details

Rome: The Golden Age is a video slot with five reels in a 3-4-5-4-3 format and 20 fixed pay lines.  Wins are awarded for three to five matching symbols landing on a line from left to right only. You can enter the colosseum on desktop, tablet or mobile from 0.10 to 50 credits per spin. The game has medium to high volatility with an RTP of 96.06% and a hit frequency of roughly 1:5.5 spins. Beware, the game can be offered with secondary RTP settings at 91.05%, 93.05% or 95.05%. Always read the help file to find out which version you will be playing.

The game window is set on what served as the royal balcony in the colosseum or gladiator arenas. Beautifully tiled with expensive marble and flanked by two statues and ancient columns, it was the spot beaten gladiators would typically look up to find out whether a thumbs-down would soon end their life. The heavy red drapes were used to shield the balcony from the hot Mediterranean sun. Various gladiator items, tigers and the traditional SPQR eagle populate the reels to an epic soundtrack.

The pay symbols start at the low end with card royals from 10 through to A, awarding 0.4x to 0.9x your stake. They are followed by swords, helmets, golden rings, SPQR eagle and tigers. Hit five on a line to win 1.2x to 5x your bet. A gold coin marked with the word itself is the wild symbol, performing the usual substitutions duties and also yielding 5x your stake for five. A golden wreath on a red flagstaff acts as the scatter while a coin with a Caesar bust is the collectable bonus symbol.

Rome: The Golden Age Slot Features

The Golden Age was indeed a period in the history of the Roman Empire. Starting in 27 B.C., it stretched the reign of five emperors, starting with Augustus and ending with Commodus, the son of the better known Marcus Aurelius, and represented a period of unprecedented prosperity for the sprawling empire. NetEnt took on the challenge to integrate the historical connection into a game with an unusual reel set similar to what we have seen on their branded Jumanji slot.

Absent any sizeable line pays, the base game is dominated by The Golden Age coins. They do not have a pay value but will leave a sticky golden frame on the landing position in their wake. Any time they land in a frame again, they can randomly turn into a Rome symbol, which will activate the frame. However, to benefit from it, you will need to spin the reels one more time. Once the reels have settled, the activated frame will transform into a wild symbol. Plus, it will turn directly adjacent frames into wilds too, replicating the wild up to five times. You could end with a full screen of wilds which will pay a paltry 100x your bet.

All Golden Age coins landing in the base game are collected in the meter on the top left corner of the game window, gradually filling the progress bar that points towards the Free Spins Multiplier to the right. Any Golden Age coin appearing on a sticky frame again will award 1 to 4 points, which will speed up the collection. Once the bar is full (after 200 coins), the Free Spins Multiplier increases consecutively from x1 to x2, x3, x5, x7, x10, x12, x15, x20, x30, x40, x50, x75, x100, x200, x300, x500, x750 and x1000.

The multiplier is reset only after a free spins round. Beware though, the collection is bet sensitive, meaning the collected coins and multipliers are specific for one stake size and are stored between play sessions. It takes on average about 100-150 spins to fill up the progress bar once.

Hitting wreath scatters on reels two, three and four will trigger the Bonus Game with initially 3 free spins. All sticky golden frames on the triggering spin will turn into Rome symbol and then transferred to the round. They will stay locked until the feature ends and award a coin win from 0.5x to 50x your bet each.

Only Rome symbols are on the reels during the bonus game and any landing will unveil a similar random coin win. They will turn sticky too and reset the free spin counter to three. The feature ends when you run out of spins or fill the entire grid with Rome symbols. All coin wins will then be added and the total amount multiplied by the collected multiplier from the base game. Scoring a full screen will double all prizes on the grid.

Final Verdict

Veni, vidi, vici! Calling out the famous Roman phrase in their brief, NetEnt implied that we are about to see another blockbuster slot that could be in the same league as Dead Or Alive 2. In reality, it stops at ‘Veni, Vidi’ as in ‘I came, I saw’ as Rome: The Golden Age fits probably better into the “At least you tried” category. It looks good and plays OK, but those ultra-low line pays just spoil the fun. Every player expects something special for a full screen of wilds and here it barely passes the big win threshold.

Speaking of win potential, the top mark of 100,000x bet has odds of 1:166 billion spins (not a typo) while 50,000x should happen once in 1.46 billion spins. More realistic are 20,000x at 1:58 million and should have a chance to be hit still within this century. As for those top wins, we probably have to wait for another Golden Age period for them to occur.

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