Golden Games Slot

The London 2012 Olympics are the big international sporting event of the mid-summer, and to get you ready for the competition we’d like to present to you one of the best online games with an Olympics-theme out there: Playtech’s Golden Games Slot. A few spins on this slot game and you’ll be ready for all the swimming, running, boxing and fencing action taking place in London from July 27th to August 12th.

Golden Games is a dynamic, Olympics-themed, multi-payline sports slot with a compettitive edge. This slot’s highlights are its animations, its free spins round and lastly its gamble option, which allows you potentially to double your total winnings at the click of a button. The game has 25 paylines, five reels and a maximum jackpot of 10,000 coins for five wild symbols.

The summer Olympics are on and you are one of the top competitors! As you wait for the Golden Games slot to load up on the screen you’ll be treated to a view of a massive Olympic stadium with fireworks exploding in the nighttime sky above (a nice little taster of the Olympics opening ceremony that really will be taking place on July 27th). This is the arena in which you’ll compete on the reels for a gold medal and the ultimate prize: a whopping 50,000 $/€/£ jackpot (of course, only players wagering real money on the game are in with a chance of taking home that prize; if you play for free, it’s for the sheer sporting entertainment).Unlike real-life Olympics competitors, who get to specialize in certain events, you have the added challenge in the Golden Games slot of needing to be a great all-round athlete, because you’ll be testing your skills in a variety of sporting events, including: basketball, tennis, fencing, cycling, boxing, swimming, weight-lifting and the discus. The animated sports symbols in this game bring the Olympic atmosphere to life. Good luck!

Symbols

As usual, Playtech have gone all out with the animations on this game and very successfully too. The tricks and features on the symbols are what make this game appealing not only to avid sports fans, but to anyone who enjoys a colorful, well-crafted online slot game with a bit of action.

The special symbols are as follows:

• Wild – This is the Golden Games gold medal, hanging from the trademark Olympic ribbon; the medal flips over to reveal the word WILD when triggered. If you land five gold medals on one spin, you win the maximum jackpot of 10,000 coins. The gold medal wild symbol can substitute for all symbols except the scatter and the free spins bonus symbol.
• Scatter – The Discus Throwing Athlete: no prizes for guessing what this well-muscled young man does when this symbol is triggered in a payline – throws the discus! If you’re lucky enough to have him launch his em, disk at you in five different places on the reels, you win 250 coins. But you get a prize for anything from two scatter symbols upwards.
• Bonus – The Olympic Torch: Situated in the Olympic stadium, the iconic symbol of the Olympic Games, the torch burns when triggered. If it lands on reels 1 and 5 the free spins round is launched.

The other cool symbols are:

• The stopwatch – starts counting the seconds when this symbol is triggered
• Tennis racquet and ball – racquet bounces the ball up and down
• Basket ball and net – the ball shoots through the net
• 250 kg weights – focus zooms in on the weights as if they are being lifted up
• The rest of the symbols all feature what can only be described as little cartoon sportsmen, all in gold, representing the Olympic sports of cycling, fencing, swimming, boxing, and running. All pulsate when triggered. These symbols come in place of the usual high-value playing card symbols (from 10 to Ace, for example), which used to be an almost permanent feature of Playtech’s online slot games. It’s nice to see Playtech moving into new territory and exploring other designs.

Wagers and jackpots

This is a 5-reel, 25 payline online game. If you play for real money, you can bet between 0.01 and 5.00 €/£/$ per line. That makes the maximum real-money jackpot for a payline 5 x 10,000 coins = 50,000 €/£/$, and the minimum 5 x 0.01 = 0.05 €/£/$ (for three swimmer symbols).

Other ways to win

Unfortunately for real-money players, Golden Games has no progressive jackpot but it does have a generous free games bonus with multipliers and a gamble feature. Here’s how they work:

• Free spins bonus – when launched a funky, sporty tune plays and your 20 free games spin out at fast speed; you basically watch and enjoy the excitement. The really good news is that a 2x multiplier is applied to all your winnings from this bonus round.
• Gamble – you can choose to gamble and hopefully double-up your winnings at any time when you have some winnings already in the “bank”. Simply click on the Gamble button and chose red or black beside the deck of cards that appears on the screen. If the next card turned over from the deck is of the same color you chose – you win! And your money is doubled. If you lose, the dealer takes all. (Incidentally, quite a few of the Playtech sports slots featured at Free Slots have this Gamble option, check out Top Trumps Football Legends and Top Trumps World Football Stars.)

Music, audio and graphics

The animated graphics are the making of this game even though they aren’t as intense as those found in comic slots such as Fantastic Four or Incredible Hulk. In terms of audio, you’ll hear plenty of fun jingles when you spin or hit a payline, and sporty tunes when you win free spins.

The Last Word

Lots of fun and sporty tricks to get you warmed up for all the medal-winning action this summer. Good entertainment when playing for free or for cash, whether you’re a bit of an athlete yourself, an Olympics buff or just a dedicated couch potato who enjoys slots. Golden Games gets eight out of ten from us, with a recommendation that you try it out, and go for gold!