Valley of the Gods 2

Yggdrasil Gaming returned to ancient Egypt in 2020 with Valley of the Gods 2, a follow-up to its 2017 release that trades the original five-reel rectangle for six reels of uneven height. The default shape runs 1-2-3-4-5-2 rows from left to right, and scarab-patterned blocker tiles fill the space around the live positions, so the grid reads as a pyramid lying on its side. Three modifier meters sit to the left of the reels, with pyramids and palm trees shimmering in a heat haze behind them and a bass-heavy score that speeds up and slows down with the action.

There are no fixed paylines. Three or more matching symbols that touch from the first reel rightwards make a win, which gives 240 ways in the starting layout and 20,160 once every blocker is gone. The pay table holds ten regular symbols: six card royals from 9 to A and four gods, Anubis, Horus, Sobek and Bastet. Bastet is the best of them and pays 20 times the stake for six in a row. No ordinary wild exists; wilds arrive only as a wild reel produced by the feature chain.

That chain drives the whole game, and any win starts it. Scarabs leave the winning symbols and smash blocker tiles, one tile per symbol in the combination, and the win also awards a respin. If the respin wins as well, the process repeats. A respin with no win spends a life instead, and once the lives are used up the respins stop and the grid collapses back to its default shape.

Destroying every blocker awards an extra life and switches on the three collection meters. From then on, winning symbols shed coloured scarabs into the meters. Five red scarabs grant another life, five blue scarabs lift the win multiplier by 1, and five golden scarabs drop a wild reel onto a random reel, where it stays until the next win or the end of the respins. Of the three modifiers the wild reel is the hardest to earn.

The published figures are an RTP of 96.3%, medium/high volatility and a top prize of 5,481x the stake, with bets from 0.25 to 125. The hit frequency is 20%, so about one spin in five returns something. Yggdrasil's own listing groups the features as respins, multipliers and wilds.