The Sword and the Grail Slot – Review & Free Play Demo

Here we go with another journey into history courtesy of the hordes at Play’n GO, who this time take us into the fictional historical world of King Arthur, a Celtic/Welsh/Cornish/British legendary hero who became an English/Norman legendary hero and then a Hollywood one.

It looks like all heroes end up in slots in the end!

The medieval setting for this game is the backdrop to a character-led game with some lovely design livening up a traditional 5-by-3 grid.

There’s a holy grail worth pursuing here in the shape of a 10,000-times stake top prize. With a top stake of £100, that’s a sizeable – even life-changing – top prize.

Of course, there are plenty of bonus games too, including a great little free spin feature and metered levels to give an arcade-style feel to the bonus.

Should you dress in full armour and embarrass your friends and family further by screaming Old Welsh battle cries as you play?

Let’s have a look in this review of The Sword and the Grail slot.

The Developers of The Sword and the Grail Slot

Play’n GO is a veteran developer with roots well back into the 1990s. Like almost all the big movers and shakers of the online casino world these days it has Swedish roots, but a global footprint.

Play’n GO don’t just make games though, they also make the software and systems that help casinos run. This gives them a great deal of power in the market. A number of large companies do this, it’s called vertical integration, and Play ‘n GO are one of the biggest.

The new titles keep coming too, with the latest including the eco-themed Rainforest Magic, the 360-degree title Demon (with the heavy metal band of the same name), thriller Mission Cash, and their casino game, 3 hand Casino Hold’em the most recent.

They have nearly 200 games in the UK market. Their biggest hit is Rich Wilde and the Book of Dead, which is a massive favourite and always a front-page game on UK online casino sites. They are also behind the Fire Joker series of games.

The Facts and Figures about The Sword and the Grail Slot

The theoretical return to player on this entertaining title is 96.53%. That is a house edge of 3.47%. This figure is the best measure we have of how a game will perform. However, it is very imperfect. It is a long-term measure of a machine’s performance. This is what will happen if the game is played in a particular way. It is not an exact measure of how you’ll get on with a game.

This figure is very average. So, you shouldn’t really notice a great difference between this and other games. The variance, however (also called volatility) is “high”. This is another fairly inexact measure, but it measures how often a game pays out – high volatility games pay out less often, but the prizes are bigger.

The top prize here is a major league 1,000,000 coins.

To win that you’ll need to bet between 10p and £100.

The game is on a standard 5-by-3 grid, with 20 pay-lines.

This game came out in August 2019, and you can play it on any device with JavaScript and HTML5.

The Game

With a lot of standard features on Sword and the Grail, most players will be able to load it up and start playing with no instruction.

This is the standard Play’n GO set-up.

At the left of the control panel is an information button, to open up the pay-table. To the right of that is your balance window. To the right of that is the bet amount, which is set by sliding along a scale to pick the amount that shows up in the bet amount window that sits to the right. Finally, a spin button and an Autoplay function complete the controls.

Look for other controls – settings, sound, more help – in the frame of the game.

How to play

The pay-table starts out with a set of cards that pay out between double stake and four-times stake for full sets.

Then we’re into the characters: Merlin pays a full-house value of 7.5-times stake; Sir Lancelot pays the same. Lady Guinevere pays 12.5-times stake for a set of five. King Arthur, the star of our game, pays 25-times stake. Wilds sub in, and pay 50-times stake for a full set of five along a pay-line.

The Sword and the Grail Slot Bonuses

The wilds are the only base-game extra, but they come with the potential of multipliers of 2x, 5x, 10x or 100x for some really big wins.

Ye Olde free spins round is the main extra round. It is triggered via scatters, with rounds going up an ascending scale tied to the ranks of chivalric progression (a beginner’s guide to feudalism!).

The levels run from one to four:

One contains five free spins with a 2x multiplier on wilds. After you have six scatters on the ranked scale you get a 5x multiplier. The third level, after 11 scatters, comes with a 10x multiplier. Level four (after 18) has that 100x multiplier.

The Verdict

We can’t tell you which games to play, and we can’t tell you whether or not you’re the sort of player who likes high volatility games. The truest test of that is in playing them – so read some reviews that explain volatility and then try the games. (Use demo mode if you don’t want to spend on experimentation.)

The Sword and the Grail slot delivers a lot of good things: lovely graphics, top-of-the-range gameplay, even a nice soundtrack.

The extras are pretty good too. Everyone loves free spins, and stratifying them in a themed way gives an extra level of engagement that is obviously designed to keep players playing for the long run.

This is one of the best medieval games we’re seen this year, and it’s well worth a trip to the tournament.