Rise of the Mountain King

NextGen Gaming sets Rise of the Mountain King on a path through mist toward a distant fortress, rendered with transparent reels over a cartoon-styled backdrop. The soundtrack draws on the same classical piece — Edvard Grieg's best-known orchestral work — that a rival studio's similarly-themed release also leans on, playing as a sweeping orchestral score in the base game before shifting to a heavier, guitar-driven version once a bonus round kicks in.

The reels run a standard 5x3 layout with 30 fixed paylines, paying with royal-card low symbols alongside a battle-axe, a shield, a troll and a damsel as the premium set; the damsel pays best among them at 13.3x the stake for a full line. A wild — the king character himself — substitutes for any of those regular symbols and pays even more on its own, 16.7x the stake for five in a row.

Landing three or more wilds in view sets off the King's Respin: any win from that spin pays first, and any scatters present on the same spin convert into extra wilds before a single respin plays out with every wild held in place and the remaining positions spinning again. New wilds that land during that respin also lock and trigger another respin, continuing until either no new wilds appear or the entire grid has turned wild, at which point the round's win is calculated and paid. This respin can also fire during the free spins round on top of its base-game trigger.

Scatters drive the main bonus, Rise of the Multiplier: landing three, four or five scatters triggers an instant scatter payout of x5, x20 or x250 the stake, and opens the free spins round with eight, nine or ten spins depending on which count landed. A collect meter sits above the reels through the round, and the wild's multiplier opens at x5. Every scatter that lands during free spins both adds a spin to the remaining total and fills the collect meter, and every third scatter collected steps the wild multiplier up through x10, x15, x25, x50 and eventually x100 — whichever tier is active applies whenever a wild forms part of a winning combination.

Outside the main features, a gamble option lets any win be pushed further by calling the colour or suit of a hidden card, doubling or quadrupling the win on a correct guess and losing it entirely on a wrong one. A Buy Pass also offers two routes into the bonus without waiting for scatters: paying 100x the stake buys 8 free spins directly, already carrying the x5 wild multiplier, while a cheaper 50x stake spins a straight 50/50 wheel for a chance at the same feature.

Rise of the Mountain King carries a 96.31% RTP, rising slightly with the Buy Pass active, alongside high volatility, a 30-payline structure and a 50,000x maximum win — one of the largest ceilings in NextGen's catalogue. Bets run from 0.30 to 15 per spin. Between the stacking wild multiplier and the King's Respin chaining across both the base game and the bonus, the biggest numbers here come from how far a single run of wilds and scatters can be pushed before it runs out.