Apollo’s Rings Base Game and Features

A heads-up: if you’re on the hunt for a run-of-the-mill 5×3, 10-payline effort, then look away now. Book of Dead, this is not. It might take a second or two to digest Apollo’s Rings’ somewhat lengthy set of rules. But first, let’s set the scene…

A jack of all trades is the mythological Apollo, the Greek God of music, dance, truth, prophecy, healing, diseases, the sun, light, poetry, and apparently, archery (who knew?). He’s certainly the boss of this game, where he stands proudly to the left of the reels overseeing the action, all rippling pecs, spiky hair like some Japanese cartoon action hero, and sure enough, arrows strapped to his back – testifying to his archery prowess. He sure helps to add a layer of mysticism, bravado, and intimidation to proceedings.

Onto more technical matters, Apollo’s Rings is governed by a medium volatile math model churning out an agreeable RTP of 96.14% by default. The paytable consists of 9 symbols split between low pays served by a shooting star, a sun, a planet, a star, and a moon, each doling out wins worth 0.08x the bet apiece – a head-turning low amount that should make sense soon.

Occupying the high end all with values of 0.12x the stake are a cat, a ram, an owl, and a sun. In addition, four separate types of Wilds can land at any time to replace all regular symbols: the regular, an x2, x3, and x4, applying their value to any wins they help to complete and only able to land on Halo Reels.

As alluded to, Apollo’s Rings operates on the fringes of convention. Instead of awarding payouts for aligned matching symbols, wins are achieved when 2 identical symbols land on top of one another across the dynamic 4×2 reel setup which possesses expansion capabilities.

Halo Reels

Score a win, and an outer ring of symbols known as a Halo Reel envelopes the original 2 rows. If new symbols contribute to an existing win, another Halo Reel is introduced, and this repeats up to a maximum of 3 times. If you do manage to hit 3 Halo Reels back to back, the game returns back to its normal state.

Halo Round Awards

Next, fix your eyes on the top of the reels where you’ll find a row of Halo Round Awards promising multipliers maxing out at 10x in addition to the Apollo Prize that may land randomly when the Halo Reels are active. Halo Round Awards multipliers are applied to any wins hit during the round.

Bow symbols are also present on the initial spin before any expansions, and may boost the value of the Apollo Prize by as much as 1.2 times.

Apollo’s Rings Bonus

When 2 scatters land, 5 Free Spins in the Apollo’s Rings Bonus are granted. Here, Bonus Boost symbols in the form of Multiplier Increase Awards and Retrigger Awards can be added to the reels before each spin commences. Should these symbols land, they remain sticky until their prize is awarded or until the round comes to a conclusion.

Multiplier Increase Awards bump up the Halo Round Multiplier Award while Retrigger Awards do exactly as they say. Note that the Apollo Prize can’t be won during the Apollo’s Rings Bonus.

Apollo’s Rings: Our Verdict

Got all that? Good.

Is there another studio out there that can rival Crazy Tooth Studio in the envelope-pushing stakes, constantly keeping the gaming community on its toes as to where they’ll will branch off next? As it was with this release, the answer was outer space where a slightly anime-looking Apollo oversees proceedings in a largely unusual manner.

The first curveball cropped up on the very first spin. The way in which a standard row of symbols doesn’t result in a payout may induce a feeling of frustration or intrigue, prompting a thorough inspection of the rules. Whether the majority of players are down for that measure of unpredictability will be known over time. Whether they’ll be up for hunting down the so-so 3,559.2x max win is another matter.

Crazy Tooth Studio once again deserves credit for daring to be different and thrusting players into a multi-faceted slot set in a handsome game world. But given the time it took us to get to grips with the intricacies of the game for the purposes of this review, you have to question how players will take to it. Like the slot world’s equivalent of Marmite – you’re gonna love it or hate it. Chalk it up as another crazy Crazy Tooth production.