Band on the rise Slotmill has now completed the required Egyptian game by releasing the feature-packed Sands of Eternity. We have to give them credit for the clever name; it caught our attention despite the saturation of the market with Egyptian-themed slot machines. Thankfully, the remainder of it wasn’t half awful, either. Slotmill may have gone with a topic that’s as overdone as it gets, but they’ve packed Sands of Eternity with a unique set of bonuses nonetheless.
Slotmill was apparently founded by a group of industry veterans (aren’t they all? ), and given the game’s semi-Relax vibe (partly due to the visual quality, partly due to the way players are tasked with destroying blocker tiles from the grid, aka Cluster Tumble, among others), we wonder if some of those vets included old hands from Relax Gaming. If your concept of Ancient Egypt is filled with massive stone buildings and blazing braziers, then Sands of Eternity is the perfect game for you. The bonus round’s animated symbols and illuminating hieroglyphics are also visually appealing.
Players who enjoy a wide variety of betting opportunities will appreciate the comprehensive selection that is comparable to ELK’s X-iter menu. Since it’s very doubtful that everyone will have access to all of them, let’s just play in the ordinary default mode, where the bets vary from 20 p/c to £/€40 per spin, and the RTP is 96.16%. Slotmill has combined this high-classed volatility with respectable maximum win potentials.
After clicking “play,” a total of 18 symbols (3 per reel on 6 reels) are placed on a 6×6 grid. At first, stone block tiles fill the remaining 18 spaces on the panel. There are 729 possible winning combinations at the outset, and when one of them is hit, the Avalanche feature triggers, wiping out it and any neighboring stone block tiles. Repeating this process until no further wins occur causes the inactive symbols to fall into the empty spaces. With enough Avalanches, you can eventually remove all of the stones from the board, opening up 46,656 different outcomes.
When we examine the functioning icons more closely, we find 9 standard pay symbols, 3 animal icons, 3 geometric icons, and 3 iconographic representations of deities. For the first kind, a payout of 0.25x occurs for a six of a kind, for the second type, 0.5x, and for the third type, 1.5x-3x the stake. This portion is completed with golden ‘W’ symbols. They are a “wild” symbol that may replace any other sign.
Slot Characteristics of “Sands of Eternity”
The main game mechanics and the many strategies for approaching the game are discussed below. The four corners of the playing field contain unique stone blocks. When these stone blocks are broken, a corresponding function is activated:
When the Scarab is destroyed, a wild symbol takes its place.
If you trigger an Avalanche while the Eye of Horus is active, it will clear the screen of all low-paying symbols.
Before the next Avalanche, the Golden Scarab will randomly place a wild symbol of size 2×2 on the screen.
Expansion at Random
The Random Expansion feature can happen on any spin of the original game. It gets rid of the common stone block tiles and expands the possible paths to 20,736.
No Risk Turns
When a scatter symbol appears, it explodes, breaking apart any nearby stone blocks and adding itself to your tally of bonus symbols. Players can earn 9, 12, 15, or 18 free spins, respectively, if they collect 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols across successive Avalanches. Each free spin during the bonus round adds two to four bonus unique stone block tiles to the board. Stone blocks with ‘x1’ or ‘+1’ on them can now be broken for a +1 win multiplier or a +1 free spin. Between rounds of free spins, the multiplier for winning does not reset.
Sands of Time: The Slot’s Final Say
There are a lot of intriguing things to discuss in the game Sands of Eternity. The overall experience was reasonably satisfying because to the engaging graphics, mystery score, and smooth animation. When Avalanches obliterate blocks, expand paths, and shovel out a respectable victory point total, it’s easy to see how every element of the game fits together so beautifully. Sands of forever has all the technical makings for an entertaining night in, with a possibility of up to 7,500x the bet, but it’s unlikely to be a game players remember in the long term, let alone for forever.
Burst Mode, which is not accessible to all players, left the most impression on us. We’re not making fun of anyone who wants to play this way, but ask yourself honestly: do you want to? Burst Mode is perfect for when time is of the essence, or when all you want to do is stare at a purple cloud as numbers randomly appear on the screen. To be clear, in Burst Mode, the grid disappears and there is no meaningful action to observe; if free spins are generated, you may just skip over them. In this kind of play, magic is reduced to meaningless code and numbers, and the experience is cold and emotionless. We loaded up 1,000 spins and sped through them in around 10 minutes to get a feel for the speed of Burst Mode. The total payout from the thousand spins was €879.05, with €122.90 coming from the three bonus games. Keep in mind that all we saw was a purple cloud belching forth digits.
The remainder of the game wasn’t as contentious, but it was still enjoyable. There is a theory that Sands of Eternity’s accessibility is largely attributable to the fact that many of its fundamental themes have been recycled from other games. Sands of Eternity, however, manages to tie everything together in its own special way, and the overall quality of the game is strong enough to encourage further examination by gamers in search of a slot machine with an Egyptian theme that departs from the standard.