Golden Glyph 2

Theme and Design

Epic, Sweeping Desert Scene and Slick Grid Animations

Golden Glyph 2 is certainly a top-class production. Your eyes will be glued to the grid throughout because there is a lot going on but when you get a chance, take in the background, a sweeping vista of desert with sand dunes and a large temple flanked by columns. There is a man on horseback to the left of the grid too, perhaps planning to enter and plunder some treasures. The whole scene is designed in classic Quickspin yellows and oranges, which will please any fan of this studio.

The grid itself is impressive too, housing beautifully illustrated hieroglyphs which drop down into position with a satisfying thud, reminiscent of games like Temple Tumble from Relax Gaming. There are also a lot of nice animations as various Power Up features unlock and scarabs fly over the grid, or giant wilds slide into position. And all soundtracked by an epic orchestral tune.

In short, definitely deserving of top marks.

RTP and Variance

Golden Glyph 2 has a fixed RTP of 96.09% so wherever you play this slot it will run at that setting. That is about average for an online slot game.

Interestingly, Quickspin are one of just a few game developers that provide a proper breakdown of how that RTP is divided amongst the base game and bonus round on their website. In this case 63.54% RTP is from the base game (including features) and 32.56% from the free spins round. Keep in mind that the majority of spins occur in the base game so relatively you will see more payout per spin in the free spins round.

The game gets a 4/5 rating on Quickspin’s own volatility scale so it’s going to be a tight slot, and that aligns with what we see in the RTP distribution, with around 1/3^rd of RTP saved back for a bonus round that represents a relatively small amount of gameplay.

Maximum Win

The maximum payout in Golden Glyph 2 is 26,800x. Again referring to the Quickspin gamesheet, the odds of hitting that are 1 in 1 billion spins! So don’t hold your breathe. But also keep in mind that many people are spinning this game every week so it will eventually kick out one of those max payouts. For comparison, this is twice the potential of the original Golden Glyph (13,000x).

Symbols and Paytable

So, this is a classic Cluster Pays slot playing out on a 7x7 grid. The fun part about these slots is the ability to build huge clusters of identical symbols as big as 15 or more in size. Clusters are groups where the symbols land on adjacent positions vertically, horizontally, or both.

With the chance to build big clusters comes the chance to score big payouts. So at the top of the paytable there are some impressive numbers, maxing out at 150x for 15 or more premiums.

Before we get there though, let’s start with the low payers. These are the 4 hieroglyphs including water symbols, eyes and serpents, valued at from 0.1x for 5 water symbols up to 18x for 15 more serpents. The premiums are represented by the male and female pharaohs and the bird god Horus which you will probably recognize from plenty of other Egyptian slots.  These are valued at from 0.2x for 5 male symbols up to 150x for 15 or more of the Horus symbols.

There is also a Wild, represented by a W, which will substitute for any other pay symbol to complete clusters.

Features and Gameplay

Tumbling Reels and Glyph Power Ups

To understand Golden Glyph 2, first of all you need to know that this is a Tumbling Reels game. That means, after a winning cluster is formed, all the winning icons are removed from the grid and new ones drop in to replace them. If more wins appear, then the process repeats.

Most important of all though, every time a cluster of winning symbols is removed, a Power Glyph symbol appears in one of the empty spaces left behind. Then, if a Power Glyph symbol is then used in a subsequent win, it will activate a Power Up. The available Power Ups are displayed in a row shown under the main grid, and they change with each spin.

What makes it even more exciting is that you can build up a sequence of Power Ups when more than one Power Glyph win happens at the same time. When this happens, then each one will play out in turn.

These are the Power Ups:

Golden Scarab Power-Up - from 4 to 11 wilds are delivered to random places on the grid. A flying Scarab beetle moves around the grid, distributing them as it goes.

Gigantic Wild Power-Up - a massive 2x2 wild appears in a random place on the grid.

Patterns of Horus Power-Up – symbols are removed from the grid in one of 6 special patterns. These are the Cross, Bird, Hourglass, Ankh, Eye, and Snake patterns. After the symbols are removed, if more cluster are created, another Tumble occurs, and so on.

Get 7 Golden Glyph Free Spins

First, I should say that in 200 spins I rarely saw a Pyramid Scatter symbol so I never even got close to unlocking the free spins round. But hey, maybe I was just unlucky!

You need 3 of these elusive Pyramid Scatters to unlock the free spins round where you’ll get 7 plays. A Golden Glyph Wild is added at the start, and it stays on the grid throughout, moving to different spots with each spin. It has its own multiplier too, which will increase by 1x (maxing at 50x) each time it forms part of a winning cluster.

Better still, you can add a further 3 Golden Glyph Wilds with multipliers through the Power-Ups during the free spins round. And you can see how in this way you could trigger some massive payouts at those multipliers grow and even combine when more than one is involved in cluster.

And to end, you can add 5 more spins by landing 3 more Pyramid Scatters during the free spins round.