Hall of the Mountain King Slot Review

Hall of the Mountain King is a video slot from Quickspin with 5 reels and 20 paylines. Released in May 2018, this game is available at LeoVegas, Casumo or Guts.

Theme and basic information

With Hall of the Mountain King we’re getting a fantasy theme. We’re visiting the realm of the trolls, who look fierce, but seem to live largely peaceful lives. The setting is lovely landscape near the mountains and the slot is drawn quite beautifully.

The hall of the Mountain King makes an appearance during the free spins and it is most impressive. The soundtrack is most fitting as well. Orchestral and leaning on a piece by Edvard Grieg, it picks up speed when the free spins hit and the action picks up as well.

On the reels we find five different trolls: two females, two males and the Mountain King himself. Additionally, we get five playing card symbols from 10 to A, each of which corresponding to one of the trolls in colour.

The Mountain King is the most valuable symbol on the reels (alongside the wild, actually). He pays out 40x our stake for a win of 5 of a kind. The two female trolls follow with 20x and 15x our stake for such a winning combination. And the two other male trolls pay out 10x and 7.5x our stake for 5 of a kind.

You can play this game from 0.20 to 100.00.

Your wilds determine your multiplier

The base game comes with extra multipliers that are shown on the left-hand side. And in an interesting twist, it is the number of wilds landing anywhere on the reels that determine the multiplier you get on a winning, regardless of whether the wilds are part of the winning combination or not.

So, one wild comes with a 1x multiplier, which doesn’t really count. But five wilds will give you a 5x multiplier on your win and usually, these wilds are also all part of your winning combination when that happens. And it does happen. In fact, we’ve won over 200x our stake with 5 wilds and a 5x multiplier. It doesn’t happen often, of course, but it’s not impossible.

Epic free spins in 3 stages

The free spins in Hall of the Mountain King are probably the most complex we’ve ever seen in any bonus game ever. The scatter is a large stone hammer that lands only on reels 2, 3 and 4.

We’re taken to a different set of reels inside the Hall of the Mountain King and the setup slightly changes. You get the multiplier meter on the left-hand side again and another meter is added to the right side, depending on what stage you’re in. The free spins then play out in 3 stages.

Stage 1 – Symbol Upgrade feature – on the right-hand side appear the playing card symbols from 10 to A with 10 being at the bottom. Should you score a winning combination, the Mountain King will destroy the bottom symbol and it is then replaced with its corresponding high-value symbol on the reels. With each non-winning spin, lights will climb the symbols on the right until you hit the A. When that happens, all As in the game are upgraded to the Mountain King symbol on the reels and we enter stage 2.

Stage 2 – Whirling Wilds Collection – now wild symbols are showing on the meter on the right-hand side. Should you score a winning combination, the block with the wild will once again be destroyed by the Mountain King and it will be added to the whirl above the reels. With every non-winning spin, the light will once again climb the meter until you hit the top symbol, which contains two wilds. These will be guaranteed added to the whirl above the reels when you enter stage 3.

Stage 3 – Depending on how many wilds you may have collected (6 at the most), the remaining spins are played out and, on every spin, one wild is guaranteed to be added to the reels (on top of any other wilds that may land on the reels). You get 3 spins in total and your wilds will be added at random.

Throughout the first two stages, the multiplier blocks on the left-hand side can also be destroyed. If a multiplier is applied in a winning combination, the Mountain King will destroy the bottom multiplier, which begins at 1x as well. Thus, on your next win, you’re guaranteed to get a 2x multiplier, and so forth. The multiplier here can climb up to 15x.

There’s no set number of free spins you’ll play. In theory, the minimum number you’ll play is 13 spins. Five each in the first two stages and three in the last. This is only possible, if you don’t score wins in the first two stages or only on the final spin in every stage.

If you score a win during the first two stages, a block is always destroyed and the lights counting the spins on the right-hand meter, will fall back to the bottom. That way you’ll get more spins and another chance at upgrading more symbols and collecting more wilds.

Conclusion: An epic slot that is highly volatile and rarely keeping its promise

The theoretical RTP (Return to Player) of Hall of the Mountain King is 96.29%. That’s slightly above average and not too bad. But this slot is very volatile, and it has got to be one of the most frustrating games we have ever played.

For starters, be careful to budget and don’t set your bet too high. We fared much better at a lower stake than when we risked a little more. With a higher stake, we ended up losing much more than we ever managed to win. But a little more careful betting ended up with most impressive wins in the long run. And you will need patience in this game. Oddly, we won a lot more in the base game thanks to 4x and 5x multipliers here and there than we managed in the free spins.

The free spin feature has a lot of potential. When you do manage to get a few symbol upgrades, climb the multipliers and collect extra wilds for the final stage, you’ll see just how much potential there is. The game could win you 7,326x your stake in a single spin.

But mostly the feature simply doesn’t deliver. It’s still just as volatile and not only have we never played more than 20 spins, we often only got 1 or 2 symbol upgrades (save once when we got 4) and couldn’t collect more than 4 additional wilds either. The most we won during a free spin game was 120x our stake. But we played enough times where we only got 10x to 20x our stake. We do like this slot. It has a lot going for it. But it is also incredibly frustrating when it doesn’t deliver on its potential.