Hand of Midas

Theme and Design

Rich Illustrations Bring The Legend To Life

Midas is part of Ancient Greek legend, the story of the guy who could turn everything he touched to gold. Sadly, that meant his loved-ones and anything he wanted to eat of drink too, which is a bit of an inconvenience even for a greed-head like that. But can this morality tale mean anything in the world of online slots? Well, it certainly makes a good basis for a richly designed game.

The reel set here sits in front of an aqua blue backdrop, more like the list city of Atlantis, with crumbling stone pillars and a giant Midas hand to the side of the reels. That hand displays a multiplier value that becomes important with each Wild-based win. The paytable is also richly-illustrated and stacked with old icons from Midas’ tale, including Midas himself, his daughter (turned gold) and various symbols of wealth. Overall, it’s not a bad-looking game and Pragmatic have certainly made the most of their inspiration.

RTP and Variance

Hand of Midas slot has 3 RTP settings – 96.54%, 95.5% or 94.51%. Which you play at will be at the discretion of your casino. Most sites run the game at one of the top 2 settings, but it may be lower so I recommend that you check the game info screen wherever you play to make sure you are getting good value for your wagering. For this review I verified the RTP at a few sites we use for testing games and found it running at 96.54% at both Barz Casino (White Hat Gaming) and MrQ (Independent).

It is also a highly volatile slot – 5/5 according to Pragmatic Play. So don’t expect an even distribution of wins. It’s a game that can run very cold, then hot, but more often cold!

Maximum Win

The maximum payout is limited to 5,000x which means you cannot win more than 5,000x on one spin. This is quite low for a high variance game but not uncommon for Pragmatic Play slots. If you want higher potential from the same provider I recommend checking out our list of Pragmatic Play’s highest win slots.

Symbols and Paytable

This slot has a traditional 5 reel and 3 row format with 20 active paylines on each spin. Wins are triggered by landing identical symbols from left to right across a payline and you can score wins on more than one payline at a time.

The paytable itself has good value. Starting with the low payers, these are the cards, 10 through to Ace. They are valued at from 0.1x for 3 10s up to 2.5x for 5 Aces. In the premiums there are a wine cup, a bowl of fruit, a chest of treasure, a gold girl, an old man, and Midas himself. These are valued at from 0.5x for 3 wine cups up to 20x for 5 of the Midas symbols.

There are also wilds that appear only on reels 2, 3 and 4. These don’t have a value but do substitute in for all pay symbols to complete paylines.

Features and Gameplay

King Midas had a simple plan and Pragmatic Play do too! This game is all about the wild multipliers and the free spins. There is nothing complicated to understand.

Wilds With 3x Multipliers

Firstly, each wild that lands will have a multiplier attached to of 1x, 2x or 3x. In an interesting animation, when a wild lands it fires off its multiplier into the 'Hand' to the right of the reels which displays the cumulative total for that spin. This multiplier value will then be applied to any win that includes a Wild.

The Ante Bet Feature To Increase Your Chances of Triggering Free Spins

With the Ante Bet feature you increase the number of scatters on the reels to increase your chances of hitting the free spins round. This costs an extra 25%. So a £1 bet becomes £1.25.

The Free Spins Feature With 3x Multiplier And Sticky Wilds

The free spins round is, naturally, my favourite part of this game. To trigger it you need to land 3 or more scatters on a single spin.  Then, an interesting game plays out to decide how many spins you get.  

A set of mini reels appears – THREE for each scatter that triggered the round. Each one displays numbers 1 to 3 and they all spin. Then, the numbers each wheel lands on are added up and that is your total number of free spins.

What makes this part exciting, and makes me think a lot of RTP is saved back for this round, is that the multiplier value does not re-set between spins … AND … every wild is sticky and remains on the reels once it has landed. That gives you some seriously big potential.

And Pragmatic have added a further interesting twist. A minimum guaranteed win is set for the free spins round. So, you get 10x, 20x or 30x depending on whether you triggered the round with 3, 4 or 5 scatters. If you use up all your free spins and are short of the minimum payout then more 1x3 reels appear and they spin again to award you more free spins. These then play out. This keeps happening until you hit your minimum win!