Aldo's Journey

Travel to four historical destinations with the intrepid world explorer on the slot from Yggdrasil Gaming. Aldo’s Journey will see you wandering on a reel voyage that takes you from Italy to Persia, Mongolia and China. You’ll be having a Wild Time with walking wilds and five different Free Spin modes that can lead to wins of up to 3,000 times your bet.

Slot Details

Aldo’s Journey is a video slot with five reels, five rows and 65 fixed pay lines. Wins are awarded for three to five matching symbols on a line from left to right only. You reel quest on desktop or mobile starts at just 0.10 credits and peaks at 100 credits per spin. The game has medium volatility with an RTP of 96.50%.

Initially announced in January 2019 under the working title Marco Polo, it gave us an early indication that the design and gameplay will be aligned with the fabled Italian explorer and merchant. Leaving his hometown Venice in 1271, he travelled through Asia along the Silk Road and ended up staying in China for more than 10 years. The stories and chronicles of the long journey are known today as “The Travels of Marco Polo”.

Unsurprisingly, Yggdrasil included four locations into their game design, starting from Italy and wandering through Persia, Mongolia and lastly China. The cartoon-like explorer appears dressed in a 13th-century merchant outfit and probably due to copyright issues has been named Aldo. The reels itself have been divided into four country areas, reflecting the long journey to China. Aldo will wander the reels as a walking wild and trigger features along the way. The soundtrack is anything but medieval or oriental and funnily changes into a quirky disco dance tune on big wins.

On the reels, you will find the card suits – clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades – at the low end of the paytable, each in a different colour and held on a coin-like icon. They are followed by gems in green, blue, purple and red colours, all awarding 2x your bet for a single five of a kind.

The game has two types of wilds, the standard being a golden icon marked with the word itself. The second is Aldo himself, appearing as a wandering Journey Wild on every spin in the base game and bonus features. Both wilds perform the usual substitution duties. A medieval compass acts as the scatter, appearing on reels two, three and four only.

Aldo’s Journey Slot Features

Having a storyline built into the gameplay is not new but it always gives a slot an additional element to engage a player. On Aldo’s Journey, you will follow his track along the Silk Road with each stop having its own distinct bonus feature. To achieve that, Yggdrasil divided the 5×5 game grid into four 3×2 segments, each representing one destination. The centre is a common position that will come into play when the explorer lands on it.

Aldo will be permanently on the reels as a wandering Journey Wild, and that in the base game and free spins. He will move to a random position in every spin, helping you to form winning combinations and triggering the Wild Time feature when he lands in the common centre location. Aldo will spread 3 – 9 random wilds across the reels and also grant you a win multiplier between x2, x3 or x4.

Hitting three compass scatters anywhere on the three centre reels will trigger 7 free spins, which cannot be retriggered. The round comes with five different modes, each with different modifiers and features. The mode for your free spins is selected based on where Aldo is located on the triggering spin. The background will take you to the respective country for the duration of the bonus round, except for the Journey Free Spins where the standard scenery with all four locations changes to a night setting.

• Top Left 3×2 Area – Italy Free Spins: Starting with an x3 win multiplier, Aldo will increase it by x1 on every free spin, reaching x10 on the final spin.
• Top Right 2×3 Area – Mongolia Free Spins: On every spin, Aldo will randomly select to have one set of pay symbols removed, leaving either only high-value or low-value symbols on the reels.
• Bottom Left 2×3 Area – Persia Free Spins: On every spin, Aldo will throw a sticky wild onto a random reel position. He might even increase the win multiplier.
• Bottom Right 3×2 Area – China Free Spins: The round starts with an x2 multiplier, plus Aldo will create a horizontal or vertical line of wild symbols on every spin.
• Centre Location – Journey Free Spins: The round starts with an x2 multiplier with all four modes active. Aldo will award the respective modifier based on which area he jumps on every free spin. By the end of the feature, you could have any mixture of sticky wilds, higher multipliers and a line of wilds.

Final Verdict

Admittedly, we set-up a preview page under Marco Polo, expecting that the final title would somehow include the name of the fabled explorer. But Yggdrasil had other plans and surprised us with Aldo, a fun character that will accompany you through every slotting session. He is key to scoring mega wins of up to 3,000 times your bet, which can be achieved in the Journey Free Spins only, although we have rarely seen a Yggdrasil slot delivering the maxium win. Overall, the game is good for entertaining medium-variance gameplay with wins regularly in the 100x to 500x range.

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