10 Swords

10 Swords: Slot Overview

'You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.' With quotes like this from Marcus Aurelius, who was emperor from 161 to 180 AD, it's no wonder all the good, bad, and ugly of Ancient Rome still resonates with us today. Wander the streets of Rome even now, centuries later, and the romance of the past can be overwhelming. Ancient Rome also makes a sweet topic to theme an online slot with. Here's another one. 10 Swords from software provider Push Gaming is a game where Sword symbols award instant cash prizes and where low-pay symbols may be converted to Sword symbols aimed to aid your quest. It's also a low to medium volatile machine, something that is rather unusual coming from Push Gaming.

10 Swords' base and bonus game are both held in a columned space, where one of the main differences between the two phases is one is held at night, the other in the daytime. It's not the most splendidly over-the-top presentation of Ancient Rome, yet it is rather elegant and tastefully laid out. 10 Swords' look, in some ways, mirrors the gaming experience as a whole. This isn't a slot that seeks to overwhelm players but rather to provide a relatively comfy space for a wide range of gamblers to try their luck.

10 Swords may be played in three different ways. The default way is by picking a stake of 10 p/c to $/€100 and going for it. The second is activating the Ante Bet, which increases the base bet by 20% for a higher chance of landing Shield symbols and triggering free spins, while the third method is buying the bonus round for 50 times the bet. The respective default RTP values for the 3 options are 96.41%, 96.45%, and 96.75%, although, lower return models are available as well.

With a 5-reel, 3-row game board, 10 Swords is built using 20 paylines to land regular pay symbols across. The low-pay symbols in the game are J, Q, K, and A; then there's a horn, a drink bottle, and a helmet as the mids and 3 character symbols as the highs. For a 5 OAK hit, the lows pay 4 times the bet, the mids 10-15x the bet, and the highs, 30 to 40 times the bet. The Eagle Symbol is wild, substituting for all regular pay symbols. It lands on any reel and is worth up to 40 times the bet for a 5 wild winning line.

10 Swords: Slot Features

10 Swords' features are Sword symbol instant cash prizes and a free spins round with a low symbol to Sword symbol component.

Sword Symbols

Sword symbols land on any reels in the base or bonus game, and when 4 or more are in view, players win an instant cash prize. Prize values are 2x, 5x, 10x, 25x, 100x, 1,000x, or 5,000x the bet when 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 Sword symbols are in view.

Free Spins

The Shield symbol is the free spins scatter symbol. Landing:

• 3 Shield symbols award 8 free spins.
• 4 Shield symbols award 10 free spins with 2 low symbols converted to Sword symbols
• 5 Shield symbols award 12 free spins with 4 low symbols converted to Sword symbols.

During free spins, when Shield symbols land, they are collected on the Low symbol meter next to the grid. When 4 Shield symbols are collected toward a low symbol, this low symbol is converted into Sword symbols on the reels. The first low symbol conversion awards +4 free spins, the second conversion awards +3 free spins, and the fourth conversion awards +2 free spins.

10 Swords: Slot Verdict

Push Gaming slots might have a reputation for being insanely volatile, the slot equivalent of being wedgied by a bunch of school bullies and left hanging by your undies from a coat hook in a changing room. That reputation has been challenged of late by games like Deadly 5, Space Stacks, or Crystal Catcher, and now again by 10 Swords. This is no criticism of the studio - the team is still well adept at creating wedgie slots like Mad Cars or the upcoming Razor Returns, after all. It's just that Push Gaming has also set its sights on other sectors of the gambling market, and 10 Swords is one such slot which caters to players who might have ordinarily considered themselves outside of Push Gaming's perceived masochistic audience.

Seen from this angle, then 10 Swords pretty much achieves all of its objectives. It's low to medium volatile, uses a non-threatening theme and contains gameplay that, for the most part, should feel familiar to a lot of players. The scatter symbol triggering instant prize feature is hugely popular, so it is an ideal mechanic for reaching out to the masses. This being Push Gaming, the studio has wedged in a few innovations to add originality. This is the low symbol to sword symbol conversion, which occurs at the start of a bonus round or mid-way through after collecting the required number of Shield symbols. A pretty cool idea since it clears low pays off the board, making way for higher value symbols or Sword symbols. At its core, the goal remains the same, though – land Swords in an attempt to swipe the 5,000x the bet top prize. For the record, the max win has a theoretical hit rate of 1 in 934,579.

10 Swords might not be a case of 'I came, I saw, I conquered' but more 'I came, I chilled out, I landed a few scatter paying Sword symbols.' Yet that's sort of the point, really, where players with a broad range of tastes can engage in a bit of scatter prize-winning fun, held in the sort of high-quality gaming environment Push Gaming is famous for putting on.