Crown of the Undying Slot Review

There's a stretch of northern Japan where Buddhist monks worked out how to mummify a body without waiting around for it to die. Years of bark and roots and nuts burned the fat off, then came tea 🍵 brewed out of lacquer-tree sap.

They'd wall the man into a stone room underground and hand him a bell 🔔 to ring once a day. The morning nobody heard it, the rest of them sealed the door and got on with their lives. Two dozen of those monks are still propped up in temples.

Hacksaw built Crown of the Undying slot on the same arrangement. The Archer, Priestess and Knight symbols sit there doing nothing until The Mark kills them 💀, and the corpse is what goes to work.

Gameplay

Okay, so if you're into rainbows and unicorns and fruit slots, then you might want to avert your eyes or, better yet, run for the hills. The studio has gone for a dark theme with armour-clad black angels and eerie rolling fog amidst the ruins of a fortress.

Wins land on a 6x5 grid running Connecting Symbols, so 5 or more matching symbols have to be touching before the game parts with a cent. Winning symbols clear out and fresh ones CascadeOtherwise known as a Tumble, Avalanche, or whatever a studio sees fit to name it. The idea is the same, though; winning symbols get removed, and new ones take their place. This action could result in additional wins, in which case the action continues. down into the hole they left.

The RTPRTP stands for “Return to Player.” The RTP describes the total bet amount that a game returns to players over millions of spins, and that figure is represented by a percentage. Table games, such as Roulette, typically have higher RTPs than many slots.

RTP needs to be considered in conjunction with a game’s volatility rate. is 96.26%, the volatility is high, and a max multiplier of 10,000x builds a max win of $350,000 that the rules say is reachable in every game mode.

Bets run from $0.10 to $35 a spin. You can't play the game in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum.

The bottom of the paytable is 4 cut gems in steel star frames (amber and green and red and blue). All 4 run 0.1x for a group of 5 up to 5x for 21 or more.

Next rung up, the Archer symbol comes with a hood, a drawn bowstring and a green wash behind him. He's worth 0.3x at 5 connected and 10x once 21 of them line up.

A veiled woman with her hands together at her chin is the Priestess symbol, worth 0.5x up to 15x across those same bands. The Knight symbol holds a longsword in front of his face and tops the table at 0.7x up to 30x.

Standing in for every regular paying symbol is the Wild symbol, a bone-white crown with blue lightning coming off the spikes.

Then there's the FS Scatter symbol, a blindfolded skull ringed with blades, and it doesn't hang around. Each one feeds a stack on the FS Stack Indicator and clears off the grid the moment it lands.

The Mark is a ring of blue fire that lands in one random position at the start of every spin and holds that spot until the next spin. Keep an eye on where it falls, since that square decides what you get.

Features

THE MARK:

A high-paying symbol has to land on The Mark before anything happens. When one does, it turns undead, and fires its own ability, so dying is the promotion around here.

Once a symbol is fired, it goes lifeless and holds the square, until a fresh, high-payer drops on it and wakes the ability up again.

The same ability will fire more than once inside a spin, provided a different high-paying symbol of that type does the honors each time.

Archer:

Put an Archer symbol on The Mark and he comes back as an Undead Archer with 3 Wild symbols to fire off at random spots. That's a decent trade for one dead bowman.

Those Wild symbols stay on the grid until they're part of a winning group or the round ends, so the Archer keeps working long after he's gone.

The Undead Archer connects with Archer symbols, and it leaves the grid the moment it wins.

Sarcophagus:

A Priestess symbol on The Mark comes back as an Undead Priestess, and her whole job is sealing a prize inside a Sarcophagus Prize symbol where you can't count it yet. She won't touch a Wild symbol in the base game.

The Sarcophagus Prize symbol works as a Wild symbol and stays on the grid while it keeps landing in winning groups. The prize only opens at the bottom of the grid, so it has to survive the whole trip down before it pays as cash.

The size of the prize depends on the symbol it swallowed, and that's money the Total Multiplier bar never touches. Low-paying symbols award 10x, 15x or 20x, and high-paying symbols award 30x, 50x, 100x or 500x.

Sword:

A Knight symbol on The Mark becomes an Awakened Undead Knight, and the grid only has room for 1 of him at a time.

Once all the wins are processed, 3 swords drop onto the grid, with 1 guaranteed on the reel holding The Mark and the other 2 landing on random reels.

Each sword clears its whole reel apart from Sarcophagus Prize symbols and Wild symbols, and a fresh set of symbols Cascades in.

MULTIPLIER FEATURE:

There are 9 stacks on the Total Multiplier bar and it opens every spin at 0x, so you're always building up from bare stone. Winning groups fill 1 stack apiece, except a group with The Mark in it, which drops 3 at once.

Settle the wins and every 3 stacks filled inside that spin buys 1 random multiplier, so the bar pays you piecework. Fill all 9 and 3 multipliers come your way.

The wheel that decides them carries 5 values pulled from 2x, 3x, 5x, 8x, 10x, 25x, 50x and 100x, with repeats allowed.

Paying a multiplier costs you 3 stacks off the bar, and any leftovers stay put. In the base game the next spin wipes the bar back to 0, so nothing you build ever lasts past the spin that made it.

FREE SPINS:

Landing 3 FS Scatter symbols inside a single spin fills the FS Stack Indicator and starts Reign of the Usurper with 10 Free Spins. Landing 3 more during the round adds 2 extra spins, which isn't much of a resurrection.

Everything you scraped together in the base game gets left at the door, which stings most on the spin that finally triggers. The round runs on the same mechanics, only all 3 abilities come back stronger.

The Archer shoots 5 Wild symbols instead of 3, and the Sword clears the whole grid rather than only the reels the swords hit.

The Sarcophagus now covers 2 vertically adjacent symbols under a single prize and can convert a Wild symbol, and 1 high-paying symbol in that pair is enough to pay from the high band.

The Total Multiplier bar is the real difference. It goes progressive and carries across spins, so for the length of the round the game quits wiping your work every time you press the button.

BUY BONUS AND ANTE BET:

Straight purchase of Reign of the Usurper runs 100x and drops you in with the 10 Free Spins, at an RTPRTP stands for “Return to Player.” The RTP describes the total bet amount that a game returns to players over millions of spins, and that figure is represented by a percentage. Table games, such as Roulette, typically have higher RTPs than many slots.

RTP needs to be considered in conjunction with a game’s volatility rate. of 96.32%.

Two FeatureSpins options sit next to the buy, and both stay switched on until you go back and turn them off.

BonusHunt FeatureSpins costs 3x a spin and makes every spin 5 times more likely to trigger the round, at an RTPRTP stands for “Return to Player.” The RTP describes the total bet amount that a game returns to players over millions of spins, and that figure is represented by a percentage. Table games, such as Roulette, typically have higher RTPs than many slots.

RTP needs to be considered in conjunction with a game’s volatility rate. of 96.34%.

Hallowed Death FeatureSpins asks 50x a spin for a guaranteed ability every time, at an RTPRTP stands for “Return to Player.” The RTP describes the total bet amount that a game returns to players over millions of spins, and that figure is represented by a percentage. Table games, such as Roulette, typically have higher RTPs than many slots.

RTP needs to be considered in conjunction with a game’s volatility rate. of 96.29%, and it bars the FS Scatter symbols from landing at all.

Performance

I ran the slot hard for a couple of hours and nothing lagged or froze on me. The Cascades kept up the whole way.

Maximum Win

The max multiplier here is 10,000x, and at the top bet of $35 that comes out to a max win of $350,000. The smallest bet on the table is $0.10.

Conclusion

The game's whole economy sits on one square and whichever of the 3 abilities it wakes. A gem lands there and you get nothing, while a Knight or an Archer turns the same spin into a flooded, stripped grid.

Reign of the Usurper is where the max multiplier lives, since the bar stops resetting once you're inside.

The Sarcophagus prizes are the other way money shows up; flat cash that the multiplier bar never gets near. That's the one payout here that doesn't ask you to build something first.

You can settle into this game for a long stretch, because the RTPRTP stands for “Return to Player.” The RTP describes the total bet amount that a game returns to players over millions of spins, and that figure is represented by a percentage. Table games, such as Roulette, typically have higher RTPs than many slots.

RTP needs to be considered in conjunction with a game’s volatility rate. sits north of 96% and that's what pays for the session length.

A 10,000x max multiplier is scaled right for high volatility instead of sitting a tier under it, so the dry stretches you sit through are buying a reward that matches the risk.

Of the 3 ways to skip the wait, the outright buy is the one I'd take, since it charges the going rate for a bonus round and hands over the progressive bar.

BonusHunt is cheap enough per spin that chasing the round with it makes sense. Hallowed Death charges a lot more for guaranteed abilities and locks the FS Scatter symbols out, so the money buys you a door you can't walk through.

The slot suits high-volatility players with a bankroll deep enough to sit through long dead stretches at a mid-to-high bet. Low-bet players who need regular returns should skip it.

Slot Details

Game Provider: Hacksaw
Game Type: Video Slots
PaylinesPaylines are preset lines that run across the reels, and when you land matching symbols on them, that will result in a payout. The more paylines, the more ways you can win, but also the higher your bet per spin.: Connecting Symbols
RTPRTP stands for “Return to Player.” The RTP describes the total bet amount that a game returns to players over millions of spins, and that figure is represented by a percentage. Table games, such as Roulette, typically have higher RTPs than many slots.

RTP needs to be considered in conjunction with a game’s volatility rate.: 96.26%
Volatility RateSlot games can have low, medium, high, or extremely high volatility rates (or a combination thereof).

The less volatile the game, the more often it should pay out, but the lower the amount, the less the payout, as this is in keeping with the risk you’re taking. Volatility rate should be considered in conjunction with a game’s RTP.: High
Bonus Round: No
Progressive: No
Free Rounds: Free Spins
Max Multiplier: 10,000x
Max Win: $350,000
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