Hercules Unleashed Dream Drop

Theme and Design

There are plenty of games with an Ancient Rome theme, but the designers of this one clearly took their time researching each of Hercules’ heroic feats. The stone animals that guard the playgrid are all from one of Hercules’ tales. There’s Cerberus (the three-headed dog), Hydra (the multi-headed serpent), the Minotaur (the human/bull), and the Nemean Lion. 

The symbols on the grid also make reference to these heroic tales, while some Roman temples complete the background. There’s even an interesting animated surprise when you trigger the re-spins round (which we won’t ruin for you). With a crisp, clean finish and a level of historical detail that many slots just don’t bother with, Hercules Unleashed scores highly for its design.

RTP and Variance

With an RTP of 94%, this slot is a little low compared to some others. However, 12% of every spin goes straight to the progressive jackpot pool, making this relatively low RTP seem a whole lot more generous.

Hercules Unleashed Dream Drop does have high volatility meaning you’re likely to experience a couple of dry spells in between the bigger wins.

Maximum Win

The Dream Drops progressive jackpot means that the top payout on this game can reach as high as €3,000,000. However, it takes a while for a jackpot of that size to drop! The non-progressive max win is 10,000x your spin, which is good, but when compared to the rest of the games on the Dream Drops network, it’s pretty much bang in the middle.

If you’re looking for a higher non-progressive max win then you could try Templar Tumble 2 Dream Drop for a historical slot, with a 20,000x max win instead.

Symbols and Paytable

With a simple 5x5 paygrid, you’ve got 664 ways to win.

This is a 'connected ways' slot - you must match between three and five symbols from left to right. They must be connected to one another, either on the same row, or the row directly above or below.

There are 9 paying symbols in total, plus a scatter symbol that triggers the free spins round. The low value symbols are the playing cards, with 3 symbols giving you 0.2x your stake, 4 symbols giving you 0.3x your stake and 5 symbols giving you 0.5x your stake. The premium symbols are the mythical creatures and Hercules himself. These give you from 0.3x your stake for 3x Nemean Lions, up to 4x your stake for 5x Hercules symbols.

Features and Gameplay

Hercules Unleashed Dream Drop has four great features that take the gameplay from ordinary to excellent. Let’s find out about them all below.

Respins

Re-spins are triggered when a premium symbol completely fills the furthest left reel as one giant symbol. Sometimes, the giant symbol is only partially visible, and it MAY nudge down until it's fully visible to trigger the re-spin too.

Now, all the other reels re-spin, and only matching symbols or blanks land. When matching symbols land they are sticky, while the other positions spin again. This continues as long as new matching symbols appear.

Within this feature are expanding reels and multipliers too - let’s take a look at them.

Expanding Reels & Multipliers

Whilst the respin is in action, you might hit a special reel expanding symbol - like a lightning bolt - which adds an extra row to the grid each time it appears. You can also find pay symbols with multiplier values attached up to a maximum of 5x the usual pay. This multiplier is applied to any win that passes through it. And if more than one multiplier is part of the same win then the values are multiplied together before being applied to the payout.

Free Spins

To trigger free spins you need to land at least 3 scatter symbols. This triggers the Beast Slayer bonus round. You get 3 respins on the tally and the number of scatters that you triggered decides which premium symbol is stacked on reel 1 (3 for lion, 4 for minotaur, 5 for Hydra). The symbol stays in place for the whole round.

Any symbols that match the stacked symbols become sticky when they land and land with a multiplier of up to 5x. Every time a matching symbol lands, the spin tally is reset to three again. You can also land the expanding special symbols in this round. Plus, you can collect 10 Shield symbols to upgrade the symbol in the left reel.

Dream Drop Jackpot

The jackpot can trigger at any time. You need to get 5 DD symbols in order to play the round, if you don’t then you head back to the base game. If you do get the 5 symbols the bonus game begins.

You’ll see five different jackpots - one on top of each of the reels. Now, with each spin, shields or blanks land. Just fill a reel with shield symbols to win the respective jackpot.

The seed values for the jackpots are shown below:

• Rapid (seeded at €1)
• Midi (seeded at €5)
• Maxi (seeded at €100)
• Major (seeded at €25,000)
• Mega (seeded at €500,000 with a minimum payout of €1,000,000)