RTP and Variance

This is another high variance outing from Fantasma which means you shouldn’t expect those ghosts and ghouls to give you an easy time. Squeezing any big wins out of this game wll take patience and time and if you are looking for a casual game with an even payout distribution, you should look elsewhere. Meanwhile, the RTP here stands at 96.34%, a return that is slightly above the industry average.

The top win to aim for is a pretty decent 20,000x, putting Golden Castle on a par with other recent high variance releases in the UK.

Symbols and Paytable

The cartoonish artwork from Fantasma is carried through from the backdrop of the castle into the icons and reel set themselves. All icons are represented by gemstones which drop down on a 6-reel, 6-row grid to form winning combinations when you get lucky.

Grey, Blue and Purple Stones offer low-value prizes of 1x and 1.25x your stake when 6 land. Medium-win symbols include a Mint, Purple and Pink Gem that grant 1.50x, 1,75x and 2x your bet for 6 of a kind. A Green, Blue, Red and Crystal Jewels are high-paying icons granting from 3.50x to 10x the wager when 6 appear in a row.

Also, a Ghost King icon appears on all reels and is responsible for bringing Wilds into play. As in all other games, the Wild here substitutes for all other symbols except for the Scatter to complete winlines and trigger payouts.

The Scatters themselves, represented by the strange-looking Gargolyes, have the important job of triggering the Phantom Free Spins round where the best big-money wins are available.

Features and Gameplay

So, super-high variance slots fans will get a kick out of Golden Castle Titan Ways as it performs the usual trick of building feature upon feature to create a really compelling bonus round experience where Wilds and Multipliers can toss up some really juicy payouts when things go your way.

It’s a familiar story – here is how it all fits together.

The Avalanche Feature

Everyone who has played Megaways™ games or the classic Gonzo’s Quest will be familiar with the Avalanche Wins feature that is a regular in grid slots too. Here, every time a winning combination is formed, so the winning symbols are removed from the grid so that others can fall down in their place and hopefully create new wins. If a hole appears when the icons are removed then any Mega-sized 2×2 and 3×3 symbols will crush the ones underneath them.

The avalanche sequence continues until no more wins are created.

The Wild Haunt Feature

Look out for the Ghost King symbol – when he appears then he will usher in the

Wild Haunt Feature. Here, any Mega Symbols are broken apart into 1×1 icons, all of the same value, sometimes even all as Wilds. After that, the Ghost King symbols himself turns into a Wild and any wins that have been created are paid out.

The Phantom Free Spins Feature

Into the free spins round and its all about the mulitpliers once again.

In short, landing 3 Scatters opens the gates of the Golden castle and its most rewarding feature – the Phantom Free Spins. Here you start with 10 free spins. These can be re-triggered at any point by landing three or more scatters again.

Importantly, at the start of your free spins round a 1x multiplier is triggered.

Like many Avalanche Slots, in Golden Castle, the multiplier in the free spins round is a progressive one and each win not only initiates an Avalanche but also increases the Multiplier by 1x. The multiplier keeps going up in value and never re-sets!

This is your ticket to the biggest wins and hopefully that 20,000x top prize.

The Final Verdict

There is a lot to enjoy about Golden Castle TitanWays – it has great artwork with a classic Fantasma styling that we are getting used to now, and its use of Mega symbols sits nicely with the grid layout and Avalanche Wins format. However, aside from those cumulative wins the base game can feel a little monotonous and its only on the rare occasion that you get to the bonus round that you start to feel like this is a race you want to be in. Once there, there are a lot of basic similarities to Megaways™, though without the meteoric high variance that makes slots like Bonanza such a wild ride. Nonetheless, this is still a solid slot experience and with its’ 20,000x potential, one that will keep Fantasma fans going as we head into the summer season.