Beat The Beast: Griffin’s Gold

Beat the Beast: Griffin’s Gold: Slot Overview

Players, prepare for the final instalment in Thunderkick’s Beat the Beast pentalogy. These are slots ‘made for the brave’, being highly volatile games, offering enticing potential. Griffin’s Gold is the capstone project, offering the biggest wins of the lot – by a long shot. Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better, but it is nice to see the series sail off with a bang.

Other than that, the rest of Griffin’s Gold instantly resembles a Beat the Beast slot at a glance. All have a similar look tying them together. There’s something in the quality of the graphics, the chunky distinguishing symbols, fonts, and look of the beasts. In some ways, the Griffin is the least fearsome creature of the lot. Its story should perk up the interests of players, though. The part eagle, part lion, was known for guarding treasures, and there is plenty of rich stuff in Griffin’s Gold.

The Griffin shows up in cultures from around the world from Europe to the Middle East and beyond. In Griffin’s Gold, Thunderkick appears to have gone for a mix of Ancient Greece, Egypt, or any other nearby old culture, placing the tried and tested 5-reel, 3-row grid in an old temple. The ruined columns, the mountain view, and the clear blue skies bring to mind Delphi, but it could be any number of locations from the ancient world. In a nice touch, when the bonus game is triggered, the temple is restored to its undilapidated former glory. Like others in the range, Griffin’s Gold has a distinctive look which is pleasing to behold.

Griffin’s Gold is designed to run on any device, offering bets from 10 p/c to $/€100 per spin. One of the beast’s talons is a highly volatile math model, producing an RTP above average on 96.14%. The whole range has been something of a classic gaming experience, with straight forward base games using just 9 fixed paylines, and bonus games where the beast is let free to do a bit of devastating. So it is in the finale as well. The difference this time is that the beast has been starved for a few days before it gets let off the leash, making it extra tetchy.

There are 12 symbols in total; 10 regulars, plus a scatter and wild. Regular pays start with 10-A royals needing a minimum of three to win, while the high pay crossbow, feather, lyre, Griffin statue, and Griffin need only two. Premiums are quite valuable too, ranging from 20x to 150x for lines of five.

Beat the Beast: Griffin’s Gold: Slot Features

Don’t expect a ton of features when playing Griffin’s Gold, that's not what the series is about. What you will find is a bonus game that harnesses the thrilling power of multiplying wild multipliers.

To get to the best bits you’ll need the Griffin Emblem symbol. In the base game, it appears in one of its guises as the wild, substituting for any regular pay symbol. Its other job is scatter where 3, 4, or 5 in view award 10 free spin plus a payout of 2x, 20x, or 200x, respectively.

In the bonus, a new roaming wild enters the game, substituting for any other symbol. Roaming wilds remain on the reels for the duration of the feature. Before each new free spin, it moves to an adjacent position. Roaming wilds also carry a multiplier starting at x1. After a spin where the roaming wild is included in one or more wins, its multiplier increases by +1 – up to x5 at the most.

If a win occurs on a payline, including more than one roaming wild, their values are multiplied together. The highest possible multiplier is 125x (5x5x5), which should get you on the way to cracking the games’ Griffin sized potential. There is one more benefit. Spins where one or more roaming wilds were used in a win awards 1 extra free spin.

Beat the Beast: Griffin’s Gold: Slot Verdict

Like that, the Beat the Beast range draws to a close. It started well with Kraken's Lair, yet when it became clear the games would be so similar, enthusiasm dipped to a degree. They’ve all been good, but the overall impact lessened as the series went along. Whilst trying not to take anything away from Thunderkick’s efforts, Beat the Beast didn’t turn into quite the memorable series some hoped it would be. Undoubtedly a solid collection, albeit missing out on being a once in a generation phenomenon.

Many players after simple, high-performance gaming will appreciate what Thunderkick has done with it so far, and Griffin Gold’s turns everything up a notch. For one, the gaming retains its high volatility, and free spins have all the right ingredients for a hella thrill ride when they’re in the mood. Multiplying multipliers always go down well, and here they don’t have the large grid of say, Jammin' Jars, to leap away from each other on.

Of course, it doesn’t mean they will stick like glue racking up wins, but the possibilities are there. Even more tantalising is that free spins are added along with multipliers when wild wins occur. It means when the Griffin is in full flight, the game produces the strangely symmetrical max win figure of 22,222 times the stake. Way higher than the previous Beast slots.

Beware though, massive wins will be elusive on a fiend of a game like this. Fans who have been following the series might feel the heartstring tugs now it’s all wrapped up. The good news is Thunderkick have embarked upon a another series, the first of which is Crystal Quest: Deep Jungle, offering the same significant volatility and wins of Beat the Beast in a slightly more adventurous format.