Gates of Valhalla

Pragmatic Play returns to the frozen halls of Asgard for Gates of Valhalla, a 5x5 release with a rugged Nordic look and a payout system built around adjacency rather than a big number of paylines - only 10 lines are in play, but wins land whenever three or more matching symbols touch each other vertically or horizontally, starting from any position on the grid.

Card-suit icons (diamonds, clubs, hearts and spades) fill the low end of the pay table, worth 2.5x to 5x the stake for a full line of five, while three brightly coloured faces sit at the top, paying 10x to 75x for the same line length. A golden lion acts as the wild, standing in for everything except the scatter.

That lion doesn't disappear once it's paid out. After a winning tumble, it relocates to a new spot on the grid and picks up a +1 multiplier each time it takes part in another win, capping out at x5 before it finally clears from the board. When two or more wilds land in the same win, their multiplier values are added together first. Every win, wild-powered or not, clears the paying symbols and drops new ones into their place, and the tumbling continues for as long as fresh matches keep appearing.

Scatters decide how deep the bonus goes: three award 10 free spins, four give 12, and five unlock the full 15. A separate win multiplier runs through the whole feature, starting at x1 and gaining +1 after every tumble without resetting between individual spins, and the round can be retriggered as many times as scatters allow. Players short on patience can buy straight into the free spins for 100 times the bet.

Standard RTP is 96.46%, with alternate settings at 95.50% and 94.47% depending on the version in use; the game is rated high volatility, hits on average once every 2.40 spins, and the maximum win is capped at 10,000x the stake. Bets range from 0.20 up to 100.

Between the roaming wild's climbing multiplier in the base game and the uncapped, non-resetting multiplier during free spins, the win potential builds steadily rather than arriving all at once, with the bonus round doing most of the heavy lifting.