Ways of Athena

Theme and Design

Ways of Athena showcases Thunderkick’s design talents well. The backdrop is a painting of a sweeping rural landscape with a temple center stage behind an ornate reelset. The symbols are beautifully illustrated with intricate detail and a harp and piano soundtrack completes a warm and pleasant scene. It’s one of Thunderkick’s. more relaxing slots in fact.

RTP and Variance

Ways of Athena has an RTP of 94.21%. An RTP in the region of 94% seems to be commonplace in Thunderkick slots now. It’s not optimal – a good RTP would be in the region of 96% - but its fixed, so it will be that rate wherever you play, which is a good thing. Previous Thunderkick slots have had sub-90% RTP versions appearing at some slot sites, so I’ll take 94.21%!

This is a high volatility slot too, so the win distribution will be uneven, with the occasional burst of big wins. It’s advisable to set a low stake with games like this as they can burn down your balance fast.

Maximum Win

The max payout in Ways of Athena is a whopping 25,000x. That’s one of Thunderkick’s highest max wins and a very good top payout. It means you can win £2,500 with the minimum stake of 10p! If you like high paying games like this then check out our list of the highest max win slots.

Symbols and Paytable

The reel configuration looks simple enough – 5 reels and 3 rows. The game uses a win ways mechanic means wins are triggered by landing identical symbols on adjacent reels from left to right regardless of the row they land. That gives you 243 win ways (3x3x3x3x3). But it gets better because splitting symbols in the bonus round – explained below – can expand the rows to give you up to 43,923 win ways.

The pay table features 10 pay symbols and a wild. The pay symbols are the cards, 10 to Ace, valued at from 0.2x for 3 10s up to 1x for 5 Aces, and the vase, harp, shield, helmet and Athena. These are valued at from 0.4x for 3 vases up to 5x for 5 Athenas.

The Wild is represented by the letter W which substitutes for any pay symbol to complete a win way and is valued at 5x when 5 land on a line.

Features and Gameplay

This is a really simple slot with just Matching Mystery Symbols and a Free Spins round to enhance the win ways gameplay. This is how those features work:

Matching Mystery Symbols

On reels 2, 3, 4 and 5, Matching Mystery Symbols can land on any spin. They are represented by fire pits with pink flames. You can have up to TWO per reel. When they drop they will match with ONE of the symbols showing on reel 1, splitting into two symbols as they do so, creating an extra win way for that symbol.

For example, a Matching Mystery Symbol might match with a Shield that appears on reel 1. It if does then it becomes TWO Shield symbols.

Free Spins Round With Extra Win Ways For Matching Symbols

The headline feature here is the free spins round. You need to land 3 BONUS symbols to trigger it. These can just drop on a single spin OR you can get there by matching a Mystery symbol with a BONUS symbol on reel 1. That automatically gives you 3 BONUS symbols and you’re into the free spins.

You’ll get 8 spins, and an extra 2 for every further BONUS symbol after the first 3. So, 4 gets you 10, 5 gets you 12, and so on, with a cap of 44 free spins.

Things get much more exciting here because under the reels is a meter which can be filled by landing Mystery Symbol Orbs. Each one fills another space in the meter. Filling enough spaces to hit the next level on the meter increases the number of symbols a Matching Mystery Symbol splits into. This increases the Win Ways. Firstly, the Matching Mystery Symbols split into 3, then if you collect enough Orbs to fill the entire meter, the symbols will split into 5.

And … at each new level you get 2 more spins. It’s easy to see how when you have all Matching Mystery Symbols splitting into 5 and you have a good number of spins left, you will be able to drive some serious payouts in this game.