There’s no question that Pragmatic Play has been extremely busy working on new slots of late, as we have already reviewed at least five or six new games from the developer during the past month alone. However, they’re still not finished, as today we’ll be checking out their new Secret City Gold online slot! This is a 25-pay line machine that offers a 96.06% RTP during regular play, increasing slightly to 96.22% if the bonus buy facility is used. The maximum win is limited to 10,000x the current stake.
The base game includes a unique shape win modifier that can be triggered at the end of any paid spin, as well as featuring in the free spin bonus round. The shape wins occur more frequently during free spins and offer larger multipliers than are available in regular play. A bonus buy facility is available for those who don’t like waiting around for the feature to activate on its own, priced at a sensible 85x the normal cost per spin.
I did a double take when first opening this machine, as the look and feel of the game is surprisingly similar to one of my old Williams favourites, Montezuma. Check out our free demo slot of Secret City Gold below, and you’ll soon see what I mean.
| Provider | Pragmatic Play |
| Reels | 5 |
| Rows | 4 |
| Paylines | 25 |
| Bonus Rounds | 1 |
| Bet Range | 0.25 - 100 |
| Volatility | High |
| Max Win | 10,000x |
| Bonus Buy | Yes |
| RTP | 96.06% |
| Our Rating | 6.5 |
Secret City Gold Slot Casino Bonuses
Secret City Gold Slot Free Play
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Secret City Gold Slot Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols
Secret City Gold looks to have taken inspiration from many previous Pragmatic Play machines, as well as those from other developers. One of the first examples to spring to mind was Aztec Bonanza, but once I started digging down the rabbit hole, I soon discovered many other games with the same Aztec-based theme. PG Soft’s excellent Treasures of Aztec is another great example of the genre, along with Quickspin’s Totem Thunder. How does Pragmatic Play’s recent entry compare to those previous releases? Let’s find out!
First impressions are not the greatest; the highest-paying symbol on the paytable is the gold coin, but it’s only worth 4x the current bet for a full payline of five of a kind. Four coloured totems make up the rest of the high-paying symbol set; the red totem is worth 3.2x for all five symbols, the green will pay you 2.4x, the purple is worth 2x, and the blue is the least valuable of the bunch at 1.2x the current bet for a complete payline. There’s a bunch of low-paying royal symbols too, but those are only worth between 0.4x and 1x your bet as well… it’s all very underwhelming, to be honest. The scatter symbols can award up to 50x your bet – that’s better than nothing, but certainly not enough to make up for the low payouts making up the rest of the table.
Partaking in some real money play on Secret City Gold can begin from a minimum of €0.25 a spin, so effectively a cent per payline. The stake sizes then increment at a sensible rate before reaching the maximum bet of €100. As is always the case with a Pragmatic title, there are plenty of options between these two amounts to match the size of any potential player’s bankroll.
Base Game & Modifiers
Secret City Gold utilises a five reel, four row playfield, complete with 25 fixed paylines, and you’ll need three or more matching symbols on adjacent reels starting from the left to score yourself a win. As I mentioned in the previous section, the prizes shown on the paytable are certainly not worth getting excited about, which means we’ll need to dig a little deeper to discover where Pragmatic Play has allocated the games RTP!
Shape Wins Modifier
At the end of each spin, the game may randomly award a “shape win” to boost the value of your winnings. When this occurs, the game will pay you for any winning combinations that are currently visible before drawing a border around a random segment of the reel set.
Next, all symbols inside the shape area will transform into a single symbol chosen randomly from the paytable, similar to the mystery symbol feature included in many other online slots. Finally, the game will pay you again for the symbols inside the shape area, regardless of whether they land on one of the game’s regular paylines. A multiplier will also be awarded to boost the value of your shape win by up to 10x.
Secret City Gold Slot Bonus Features
Hitting three or more scatter symbols during the base game will award eight free spins. You won’t receive any additional spins for a four or five-scatter trigger, but the game does award a small cash prize in addition to the bonus round.
Free Spins
In this mode, the shape win modifier will activate much more frequently than during the base game. Additionally, any multipliers awarded for shape wins are retained between spins, and subsequent shape wins will adopt this collective multiplier in addition to the new multiplier awarded for the current shape.
The free spins feature cannot be re-triggered, but the game does award one additional free spin for each scatter symbol that lands whilst the bonus round is in play.
Bonus Buy
If you are feeling impatient, you may choose to purchase a free spins feature at the cost of 85x the current stake. The number of triggering scatters will be determined randomly after you make the payment. I didn’t have much luck with this feature during the time that I was writing this review. Whilst the 85x cost is relatively low compared to other online slots, I still wasn’t convinced it was worth it by the time I finished testing the game.
Secret City Gold Slot Review Final Thoughts
I’m not really sure what to make of Secret City Gold – I may just have had terrible luck when I played the game, but I can’t help but feel dubious about the chances of ever reaching the 10,000x stated maximum win. Your mileage may vary, of course, and I sure hope you have more luck with this game than I did.
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