Charlie Chance And The Curse Of Cleopatra

Theme and Design

The Fun Vintage Cartoon Style Is Consistent With The Original Charlie Chance Slots

The Curse of Cleoptra sees Charlie Chance in a new adventure with an Eastern theme as he seeks out treasures in hidden tombs. But he’s not quite Rich Wilde …

In the move from Hellish firepits to an Ancient Egyptian-setting we might have lost some of the charm of the original Charlie Chance games in my opinion. The Betty-Boo style character who tormented Charlie in Hell to Pay and XReelZ is here, this time dressed up as Cleopatra herself, but Charlie rarely appears, except to usher in the Cleo’s Columns feature or as a Mega Wild. So if you enjoyed watching him leaping around in Hell To Pay then you’ll be disappointed. Nonetheless, there is continuity in the illustration style and the detail in the drawings is superb. You’ll notice new things every time you play, like the little scarabs running around in the background, or Charlie peeping out from a trunk to the left of the grid. Throughout, our Cleo-Betty character dances along to the soundtrack to the right and overall the production is of a high quality.

RTP and Variance

In Curse of Cleopatra Play n Go have dialled the variance back down to the same medium level as the original Hell To Pay game, making for a more balanced win distribution and more regular payouts than XReelZ.

The optimum RTP here is 96.25% which is good and gets no complaints. However, there are four lower RTP settings though – 94.27%, 91.26%, 87.24% or 84.23% - and it will be at your casino’s discretion which to run the game at. I recommend that you check the RTP at your chosen site before playing with real money to be sure you are getting good value for money. I checked a few sites that we regularly use for testing games and all – including Casumo and Barz Casino – were using the 94.27% RTP.

Stakes start at 20p.

Maximum Win

Curse of Cleopatra has the lowest max win of the three Charlie Chance games to date at 5,500x. It is close to its mid-variance counterpart, Hell To Pay (6,666x) but significantly lower than XReelZ where a 20,000x potential matches the high volatility game engine. For a mid-variance slot, 5,500x is good, and with more regular wins it’s a fair trade off in my opinion.

Symbols and Paytable

Curse of Cleopatra plays out on a 6x6 grid with wins triggered by landing 5 or more identical symbols touching horizontally or vertically, or both. One of the exciting parts about Cluster Pays games is that you can build super-sized clusters. On a 6x6 grid they can be as many as 15 or more symbols in size, which makes for some huge payouts which we see at the top of the paytable at 500x.

But before we get there, the low payers are four hieroglyph symbols. These are valued at from 0.1x for 5 of the wavy line symbols, up to 10x for 15 or more of the leaves. The premiums come in at 0.5x for 5 of the blue flowers and max out at 500x for 15 or more Pharaohs.

There is also a Wild which is represented by the Scarab Beetle and substitutes for all other symbols to complete clusters.

Features and Gameplay

Whilst your ultimate goal in Charlie Chance And The Curse of Cleopatra is to unlock that free spins round, there are some nice extras in the base game to keep things interesting even before you do. So, let’s start there.

Win Multiplier and Three Modifiers In The Base Game

If you enjoy progressive features then you’ll like the multiplier that grows with consecutive wins. It starts at 1x and increases by 1x for each 3 consecutive wins. It is capped at 3x which is achieved after 9 wins in a row.

You also get these 3 modifiers which trigger at random.

Flying Scarab Wilds – These occur on ANY spin. Anywhere from 5 to 8 Scarab Beetle Wilds fly around the screen and randomly land on the grid to help complete more clusters.

Serpent’s Trail – Occurs on ANY non-winning spin. A serpent appears on the grid and forms a trail of symbols which either destroy to trigger a new cascade or transform into the same symbol.

Cleo’s Columns – Occurs on ANY spin. Two adjacent columns on the grid land with the same symbols on each row. This MAY bring up the Charlie Mega Symbols which is a 2x2 version of Charlie doing an Egyptian dance. He triggers low payers adjacent to him to be destroyed before turning into a Mega Wild for the chance to create even bigger clusters.

Get 8 Free Spins With 3 Scatters

The free spins round comes with some nice enhancements. Firstly, you’ll need 3 Cleopatra scatters to trigger it. And you’ll get 4 more for each extra scatter that lands.

Any active multiplier from the triggering spin is carried over and you’ll get a 1x increase to that multiplier for each cascade that occurs. Importantly, your multiplier does NOT re-set between spins. Also, Cleo’s Columns is active on every spin, and the other 2 modifiers may also trigger at any time.