Return To Paris

Return To Paris Slot Review

Paris after dark, painted in warm lamplight: the Eiffel Tower glowing gold against a deep blue sky, a full moon over the rooftops, and a cartoon gendarme with folded arms keeping watch beside his bulldog on a riverside bench. It’s a postcard setting for a heist, and Return To Paris commits to it fully. Better still, the cops-and-robbers routine isn’t decoration; the thief and the policeman chasing him drive every feature in the game.

It runs on a 5×4 grid with 20 fixed paylines and an RTP of 96.06%. Betsoft‘s storytelling leanings show up in the likes of 3 Pots of Venice and Take The Kingdom, but this is the studio’s most literal game of cat and mouse. The Mona Lisa is waiting on reels two, three and four.

Symbols and Payouts

The reels are stocked with museum loot. Diamonds, crowns, statue busts and vases make up the high end, with A, K, Q and J filling the low end. All symbol values below are multiples of the total bet, not the line bet.

• Wild – 2.50x for three, 5x for four, 25x for five
• Diamond – 1.25x for three, 3.75x for four, 10x for five
• Crown – 1x for three, 2.50x for four, 5x for five
• Bust – 0.75x for three, 1.25x for four, 3.75x for five
• Urn – 0.50x for three, 0.75x for four, 2.50x for five
• A, K, Q, J – 0.25x for three, 0.50x for four, 1x for five

Wins pay left to right on adjacent reels, the highest win per line counts, and coinciding wins on different paylines combine. Payouts adjust dynamically to the selected bet. The wild is the richest symbol on the grid and substitutes for everything except the scatter and the thief, unless the two special characters collide in a Wild Explosion.

The scatter is the Mona Lisa herself: a no-pay symbol that appears only on reels two, three and four, and three of her trigger the free spins. Four special characters share the grid in total, each with its own job.

• Wild – substitutes for all symbols except the scatter and the Thief, except in a Wild Explosion collision
• Thief – steals adjacent symbols and builds the Stolen Treasures multipliers
• Policeman – returns stolen treasures to the museum for a cash payout
• Mona Lisa scatter – pays nothing itself, but three on reels two, three and four open the free spins round

Stolen Treasures

When the Thief symbol lands, he picks an adjacent symbol, steals it, and adds it to his collection in the Stolen Treasures bar at the bottom of the reels. The matching counter in that bar gains a 1x multiplier, and every time he steals the same symbol again, that multiplier climbs. A new random regular symbol fills the space he left behind.

The Policeman is the counterweight. When he appears, he returns a nearby stolen treasure to the museum, paying it out like a three of a kind combination for that symbol multiplied by whatever the multiplier has built to. The multiplier then resets to 1x. Only one Thief and one Policeman are allowed on the grid at the same time.

Wins are calculated first, then the special symbols move, and new symbols replace the moved ones so fresh wins can form. If neither character has a neighbour of the other kind to act on, the Thief simply chooses any adjacent symbol, and the Policeman picks an adjacent symbol of his own.

There’s a persistence mechanic underneath all of this: multipliers are stored separately for each bet level, and progress at a given stake is saved and resumes if you come back to that coin later. A long session at one bet size genuinely builds something.

Wild Explosion

When the Thief and the Policeman land next to each other, or meet adjacently, horizontally or vertically, the Wild Explosion fires. Every symbol surrounding the pair on the reels transforms into a wild, including the Thief and the Policeman themselves. It’s a single dramatic event rather than a sustained one, but it can rewrite a spin at a stroke.

If Stolen Treasures and Wild Explosion occur in the same spin, the order is fixed: first the multiplier applies to the stolen item or the cash win lands, then the explosion turns the neighbourhood wild. It’s the game’s one moment of pure chaos, and it can’t happen during free spins.

Mona Lisa Free Spins

Three Mona Lisa scatters on reels two, three and four trigger free spins, and the round is open-ended: there’s no fixed award, and a single round can run to as many as 1,000 free spins. It starts with the Thief in the top left corner and the Policeman in the bottom right.

After each spin, both characters move. The Thief moves first, the Policeman second, each shifting one position horizontally or vertically, and new symbols appear where they were, granting extra chances for wins along the way. The Thief keeps stealing as he goes, pushing the multipliers in the Stolen Treasures bar ever higher. The Policeman does nothing but chase him.

The round ends the moment the Policeman finishes his movement on a position adjacent to the Thief. He then moves towards an adjacent symbol and returns it to the museum. The final payout is where the round pays off: an amount equivalent to five of a kind for that reclaimed symbol, plus every built-up multiplier attached to it. The longer the chase runs, the fatter that closing settlement gets.

The round has its boundaries, and they’re firm ones:

• The Wild Explosion cannot occur during free spins
• The round cannot be retriggered once it’s under way
• All spins play at the bet of the triggering spin
• When it’s over, the Stolen Treasures bar resets and the base game begins again

The whole round is a chase in the literal sense: the longer the gendarme takes to corner his man, the richer the museum’s recovered loot.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.8/10

This is a slow-burn game wearing a fast-city coat of paint. The reason to pick it is the chase itself: the free spins round, where every spin the Thief stays ahead of the gendarme is another multiplier banked towards the closing settlement, and the whole thing can run for hundreds of spins on one trigger.

The persistence is the best part. Multipliers saved per bet level mean a session at one stake accumulates instead of evaporating, and that’s rare in a 20-payline slot. The downside is the raw paytable: 25x for five wilds is the ceiling the reels hand you, so every big result has to be manufactured by the multiplier bar rather than the spin.

It suits players who like a long build and are happy to park themselves at one bet size while the loot stacks up. Anyone after immediate, reel-born fireworks will find the boulevard quiet. For the patient, though, the heist pays off the Parisian way: slowly, then all at once under the lamplight.

Return To Paris FAQs

• What is the RTP of Return To Paris?

  Return To Paris runs at an RTP of 96.06%.
• How many paylines does Return To Paris have?

  It’s a 5×4 reel slot with 20 fixed paylines, numbered 1 to 20 in the game’s diagram. Wins pay left to right and the highest win per line counts.
• What is the grid size of Return To Paris?

  The game plays on a 5×4 grid: five reels and four rows, with the Stolen Treasures collection bar sitting below the reels.
• How do you trigger free spins in Return To Paris?

  Three Mona Lisa scatter symbols on reels 2, 3 and 4 trigger Mona Lisa Free Spins. The round is open-ended, can run for up to 1,000 free spins, and ends when the Policeman finishes a move adjacent to the Thief.
• What does the Thief symbol do in Return To Paris?

  When the Thief lands, he steals an adjacent symbol and adds it to his Stolen Treasures collection, giving that symbol a 1x multiplier that increases each time he steals it again. The Policeman returns stolen treasures to the museum, paying out three of a kind for that symbol multiplied by its accumulated multiplier, then resetting it.
• Can free spins be retriggered in Return To Paris?

  No. Free spins cannot be retriggered during the round, and the Wild Explosion event doesn’t occur during free spins either. All spins play at the bet of the triggering spin.
• What happens when the Thief and Policeman meet in Return To Paris?

  In the base game, a Thief and a Policeman landing next to each other or meeting adjacently, horizontally or vertically, triggers the Wild Explosion: every symbol surrounding the pair, including the two characters, turns into a wild. In free spins, the same meeting ends the round instead, with the Policeman returning a stolen treasure for a five-of-a-kind payout plus its multipliers.
• Who makes Return To Paris?

  Return To Paris is made by Betsoft, the studio behind titles including 3 Pots of Venice, Take The Kingdom and Book Of Helios.
• When is Return To Paris released?

  Return To Paris’s release date is 14 October 2021.