Caravan Of Riches

Caravan Of Riches Slot Review

Under the bunting strung between whitewashed rooftops and the canopies sagging over its market street, Caravan Of Riches hides a paytable that barely pays at all: five of its best symbol returns 5x, and the game doesn’t mind, because its characters were never meant to earn their keep on the lines. The reels exist to trigger features, not to pay them out.

That’s a deliberate choice, and Fantasma Games have made it on a 96.03% RTP at mid-to-high volatility, with an irregular cross-shaped grid of five reels paying across 20 lines. It’s a distinctive build, closer in spirit to the studio’s Fantasma Games titles Medallion Megaways and Flower Fortunes Megaways than to anything conventional, though it swaps their reel-counting for a mechanic of its own.

The Base Game

The grid is a cross shape: five reels of varying height, with the middle of the layout standing taller than the edges. Wins pay left to right across the 20 fixed lines, and only the highest combination on each line counts. There’s nothing exotic about the line mechanics themselves.

The shape is what changes which symbols can sit where, and that matters more here than in most games. Five character symbols sit above four lower-paying relics, and it’s the characters that drive both of the game’s features. The Wild lands only on reels two, three and four, substitutes for everything except the Scatter, and can stand in for a character to help trigger the Silk Road Feature.

The Scatter occupies the same three reels, and three of them in the base game award the free spins. Neither symbol pays anything on its own, so both are purely functional. The characters themselves are ranked from the golden crowned woman down to the blue headscarf man, and that ranking matters twice over: it sets the line pays, and it decides the order in which symbols are removed during the free spins. All symbol values below are multiples of the total bet:

• Golden crowned woman: 1x for three, 2.5x for four, 5x for five
• Red hood woman: 0.5x / 1x / 2x
• Purple-earring woman: 0.4x / 0.7x / 1x
• Bald man: 0.35x / 0.6x / 0.9x
• Blue headscarf man: 0.3x / 0.5x / 0.75x
• Purple gem: 0.25x / 0.35x / 0.5x
• Dagger: 0.2x / 0.3x / 0.45x
• Green scroll: 0.15x / 0.25x / 0.4x
• Blue bottle: 0.1x / 0.2x / 0.35x

Those are modest line pays, and five-of-a-kind of the best symbol returns just 5x the stake. The step from characters to relics is steep, too: the top relic pays a quarter of the crowned woman at the same combination length. The real money in this game is designed to arrive through the features rather than the lines.

The Silk Road Feature

The Silk Road Feature is the game’s signature mechanic, and it can hit in the base game or the free spins. It triggers when a cluster of matching character symbols spans all five reels at once, with each reel showing the same character concurrently. The Scatter and the Wild can both substitute for a character to help complete that span, which is why those two symbols only need the middle three reels to do their work.

Line wins are evaluated first. Then every matching character symbol and Wild in the cluster activates a single reel spin of its own, and each of those single spins can land on a Blank, a Coin or a Scatter. Every Coin that lands reveals a cash prize.

All of those prizes are paid out on top of the line wins when the feature ends, so a single span can pay twice over: once as a line win and once as a run of coin reveals. The cash prize ranges vary depending on which character activated the feature, so a span of the crowned woman pays differently from a span of the blue headscarf man.

Scatters that appear from these single reel spins count towards the free spins trigger, which means the feature can build towards the bonus round as well as paying on the spot. The mechanics feed each other: a cluster pays cash now, and any Scatters it drops bring the free spins closer. It’s the busiest mechanic in the game, and the one the whole design hangs on.

Symbol Upgrade Free Spins

Three Scatters on the reels in the base game award 10 free spins and open the Symbol Upgrade round. The round has five levels, starting at level 0, and it climbs by collecting Scatters. Every four Scatters collected levels the round up and awards three extra spins, with 16 Scatters in total reaching the top level.

Each level removes the lowest-paying character from the reels:

• Level 0: all five character symbols can land
• Level 1: only the top four characters can land
• Level 2: only the top three can land
• Level 3: only the top two can land
• Level 4: only the top character can land

Level 4 is the whole point of the round. With only one character symbol in play, every character that lands is part of a match, and the Silk Road Feature becomes dramatically easier to span. The five characters that started the round have been whittled down to the one that pays best.

There’s a second source of extra spins beyond the ladder: three Scatters appearing during the round award five additional spins on their own. The round also runs with the same lines and bet as the spin that triggered it, so nothing about the stakes changes mid-bonus. The upgrade ladder rewards patience, and the two spin-award routes together give a long round real room to run.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.8/10

This is a slot that holds its money back. Line wins barely register, the spans and their coins carry the base game, and the round worth reaching is the one that slowly strips the reels down to a single character. That ladder is the reason to pick it: watching level 4 arrive, where every character lands as a match, is the best thing here.

The strength is how neatly the two features feed each other, since Scatters dropped by single reel spins count towards the trigger, so a paying span also brings the bonus closer. The weakness is the wait. Sixteen Scatters is a long climb at four a level, and the base game between features is lean by design.

It’s built for players who like a bonus that grows into something rather than one that pays on arrival. Anyone after steady line wins from a five-reel game won’t find them here. For the patient type, though, this market town pays its best customers last.

Caravan Of Riches FAQs

• What is the RTP of Caravan Of Riches?

  The RTP is 96.03%.
• Is Caravan Of Riches high volatility?

  It’s a mid-to-high volatility game, so wins won’t arrive constantly but the feature potential is where the bigger payouts sit.
• How do you trigger the free spins in Caravan Of Riches?

  Three Scatter symbols on reels two, three and four in the base game award 10 free spins. Scatters can also appear from the Silk Road Feature’s single reel spins and count towards the trigger.
• How does the Symbol Upgrade Free Spins round work?

  The round has five levels and starts at level 0 with all five character symbols in play. Every four Scatter symbols collected levels the round up, awards three extra spins and removes the lowest-paying character, until level 4 where only the top character can land.
• What is the Silk Road Feature?

  It’s a modifier that can activate in the base game or the free spins when a cluster of matching character symbols spans all five reels. Each symbol in the cluster activates a single reel spin that can land a Coin revealing a cash prize, paid on top of the line wins.
• Can the free spins retrigger in Caravan Of Riches?

  Yes. Three Scatter symbols appearing during the free spins award five additional spins, and every four Scatters collected on the upgrade ladder adds three more.
• How many paylines does Caravan Of Riches have?

  There are 20 fixed paylines, paying left to right, on an irregular cross-shaped grid of five reels of varying height.
• Who makes Caravan Of Riches?

  Caravan Of Riches is made by Fantasma Games, whose other titles include Medallion Megaways and Flower Fortunes Megaways.