The Terracotta Army is a collection of sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first recorded emperor of China. Today, the site of this mausoleum is one of the Middle Kingdom’s best-known tourist attractions, despite the horrific and widespread destruction of much of the site during Mad Mao’s ill-conceived “Cultural Revolution” during the decade beginning in May 1966. In recent times, the historical value of this location has finally been properly recognised, leading to it being assigned UNESCO World Heritage status. As for Blue Guru’s Terracotta Army slot, this is a 39,375 pay way machine offering a 96.06% RTP alongside a respectable maximum jackpot of 10,000x the total bet.
The paytable of the Terracotta Army slot promises to take you on a journey to the legendary tomb of the eponymous fighters. This trip will see you travel through an immersive world of mystery symbols, re-spins, and free spin bonus rounds. Mystery symbols are often a bit of a damp squib in my eyes, potentially sitting right at the top of my list of the most pointless features in online slots! Thankfully, Blue Guru has opted to assign multipliers of up to 5x to their mystery symbols, and this game even allows them to generate additional pay ways under certain conditions. The base game also benefits from a couple of modifiers, whilst the bonus round includes a symbol removal feature to spice up the action. Finally, the bonus buy menu allows you to purchase a three, four, or five-scatter free spin session.
I’d love to visit the shrine of the Terracotta Warriors, but the fact that it’s located in a country that I would almost certainly never want to step foot in kind of puts a dampener on that idea! If you feel the same, why not stick to our free Terracotta Army slot demo instead? It’s available to play below.
| Provider | Blue Guru Games |
| Reels | 5 |
| Rows | 3 |
| Paylines | 39,375 |
| Bonus Rounds | 1 |
| Bet Range | 0.20 - 100 |
| Volatility | High |
| Max Win | 10,000x |
| Bonus Buy | Yes |
| RTP | 96.06% |
| Our Rating | 6.0 |
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Terracotta Army Demo Slot
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Terracotta Army Slot Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols
Regarding slots themed around the Far East, I tend to prefer the ones with a Japanese or Korean vibe to them rather than those based around China. I’m not sure why that is, but I almost feel the developers are letting the Middle Kingdom down much of the time! Take Relax Gaming’s Tsai Shen Dream Drop, for example – the Dream Drop franchise is packed with fantastic slots, yet Tsai Shen was a definite misfire for an otherwise reliable software house. Let’s not even get started on all of those weird Mahjong-inspired slots such as Mahjong Jinpai either – they might be fun if you understand and enjoy Mahjong, but the mechanics of that machine are so bizarre that it’s not even a real slot in many aspects.
Whenever you have a slot machine with tens of thousands of payways, you can be near-certain of disappointing numbers on the paytable. Games such as Terracotta Army rely on you winning on huge numbers of payways simultaneously rather than single line hits, so don’t read too much into the fact that the highest-paying red character symbol has a maximum payout of 5x the total bet for a complete payway of five of a kind. The purple character drops this to 4x for all five symbols, followed by 3x for the blue and 2.5x for the green fellow. The low-paying symbols feature animal-inspired insignia, and their colours and values follow the same pattern as the high-paying symbols. This makes the red symbols the most valuable, with a 2x return for a full payway, whilst the purple, blue, and green insignia have maximum payouts of 1.5x, 1.5x, and 1x the current stake, respectively.
The range of available bets is large enough to satisfy every player I know, with minimum/maximum permitted stakes of €0.20 and €100.00 per spin, respectively. The issue, as is often the case nowadays, is Blue Guru’s insistence on imposing arbitrary limitations on exactly how much you can bet. There are only nine possible values despite the top bet being 500x larger than the minimum. There’s no good reason for such restrictive staking options, and I wish this trend would disappear from contemporary slot releases.
Terracotta Army Slot Base Game
At first glance, Terracotta Army appears just like the majority of other traditional video slots – there are five reels of three rows each, so how do we end up with 39,375 possible payways? It’s all related to the unique mystery symbols that Blue Guru has added to all five reels, but the payout mechanics still require you to land at least three matching symbols starting from the left to win yourself a prize.
Sticky Mystery Symbols
Mystery symbols can often feel like a pointless addition to many online slots, but Terracotta Army does a better job of making use of this overused mechanic than those other machines. The game’s unique mystery symbols are only present on reels two, three, and four but can land with multipliers of 2x, 3x, 4x, or 5x. Most importantly, if two more or more mystery symbols land on the same reel, they will expand and create additional payways.
Even more interesting are the sticky variants of the mystery symbol – these are created when a scatter lands on the reels during the bonus round and lock in place for the remainder of your bonus round.
Palace Of Mercury
If three identical high-paying symbols land on the first reel of Terracotta Army, the remaining reels will transform all symbols into stacks of random high-paying symbols. If this does not result in a win, you’ll be given a second chance courtesy of a free re-spin.
Terracotta Army Slot Bonus Features
Scatter symbols can land anywhere in the Terracotta Army slot, but you’ll need at least three of them to trigger the main bonus round. Each triggering scatter symbol will award either an additional free spin or if you are lucky, a sticky mystery symbol which will be locked in place from the very beginning of your feature. Depending on what your scatter symbols reveal, you can potentially win up to nine free spins with five sticky mystery symbols.
Free Spins Feature
In this mode, every scatter symbol that lands on the reels will transform into a sticky mystery symbol as well as being collected in the progress meter displayed above the reels. After three scatters have been collected, one low-paying symbol will be removed entirely from all five-reel strips. It’s possible to remove up to three low symbols in total, after which subsequent scatters will only reward you with sticky mystery symbols.
Bonus Buy
Three levels of bonus buy are available, costing 45x, 90x, or 180x the current stake. These options mirror the three, four, and five scatter triggers, respectively.
Pros
- Mystery symbols that don’t suck – who would have thought it, eh?
- Sticky mystery symbols during free spins can result in monster wins.
- Better-than-average maximum prize of 10,000 times the total bet.
Cons
- Despite the huge headline figure, you rarely see a round with more than 10,000 payways.
- Even a five-scatter trigger can be disappointing if you only get extra spins and not sticky symbols – this is especially true when using the bonus buy facility.
Terracotta Army Slot Review Final Thoughts
I’m not especially keen on the look of this game, and I frequently found myself disappointed when purchasing bonus rounds and never being awarded more than a single sticky mystery symbol. There are some good ideas here, but the execution is flawed, and the low standard paytable prizes make it difficult to hit anything exciting outside of the bonus round.
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