Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win: Slot Overview

If you're a student of mythology or an avid player of online slots, there is a good chance you have bumped into Medusa at some stage. Medusa was one of the three Gorgons, most famously known for having snakes instead of hair and possessing the power to turn those who looked into her eyes into stone. Some say she ended up being beheaded by the Greek hero Perseus who could still use the severed head as a weapon to stone-ify people before giving it to the goddess Athena. Somehow someway, this famous monster from antiquity lives on in a number of online slots, and she's just been given another to star in by developer iSoftBet. It goes by the name of Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win and has, you guessed it, a Hold & Win round at its heart, as well as several complementary features.

Depending on who told the tale, you have to feel sorry for Medusa. According to Ovid, Medusa was a bit of a looker and was turned into a monster by Minerva after having intimate relations with Neptune in Minerva's temple. We'll avoid debating the ins and outs of the story by diving into Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win, which takes place in its own temple-like location. A spot featuring a Greco-Roman structure, twined with snakes, in a dimly lit, though glowing spot. Dramatic music caps a scene that should be right up the alley of players into mythology slots.

When picking a stake, the base bet options are 20 p/c to $/€20, and players decide whether to make use of Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win's Golden Bet or not. When activated, the Golden Bet increases the stake by 50% while also increasing the chance of triggering Gorgon's Gaze and the bonus round. Using the Golden Bet also affects the RTP, but it does not change symbol values. In the regular mode, players get a theoretical return value of 95.95%, rising to 96.14% when using the Golden Bet.

Medium to high volatile, the base game of Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win is played on a 5x3 grid with 20 paylines and a hit frequency of 28.2%. Its symbols have a strong Ancient Greek streak to them, including the low pay Hellenic looking 10-A card royals, as well as the bow, helm/sword, Pegasus, and warrior, presumably Persues, high pays. Landing a winning combination of 5 low pays is worth 1.5 to 5 times the bet, while the same but of high pays awards 7.5 to 25 times the bet. A creepy eye symbol is the game's wild, which substitutes for any symbol except Golden Shields.

Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win: Slot Features

Golden Shields are needed to trigger the Mega Hold&Win round, but also be on the lookout for the Gorgon's Gaze Modifier, which can help with the triggering.

Gorgon's Gaze Modifier

On any base game spin, the Gorgon's Gaze modifier can trigger, turning winning symbols or Golden Shields to stone, locking them to the grid. The non-locked positions respin, and if new winning symbols or Golden Shields land, they turn to stone, and another respin occurs. This repeats until no more winning symbols land or the Mega Hold&Win is triggered.

Mega Hold&Win

At least 5 Golden Shields in view are needed to trigger the Mega Hold&Win. When the round starts, the triggering Golden Shields reveal a value of x1 to x50, on a 5x3 grid, and 3 repsins are awarded. Only Gold Shields or Boosters may land, and every time a new one lands or the Expand modifier triggers, the respin counter is reset to 3. After every respin, the Expand modifier may trigger and expand the grid up to 7x11 in size. Each time it triggers, the grid expands by up to 2 rows, 2 columns, or 1 row and 1 column.

The Booster symbols are the Multiply Booster and the Collect Booster. Only one of one type can land on the same respin. Multiplier Boosters multiply all values on all Shields on screen by x2, x3, or x5. The Collect Booster collects all values from all Shields on screen and adds them to itself.

Buy Feature

Buying the Mega Hold&Win feature can be done at the cost of 100x the bet. The RTP when buying the bonus round is 96.46%.

Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win: Slot Verdict

For a while there, iSoftBet was slinging out Hold & Win games left and right like they were hotcakes on sale. Seriously, every other game seemed to have a streak respin element tucked away somewhere, like the team just could not get enough of them. Then the studio sort of cooled on the idea, and there hadn't been a ton of them for a while before Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win came along, so it makes one wonder - is the foot back on the Hold&Win gas? Perhaps iSoftBet has been biding its time, pooling its ideas, and has now ascended to a higher level; not content making regular Hold & Win games any more, it has now progressed to Mega tier Hold & Win games.

How mega is Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win? Quite mega, in places. What largely makes it so is a top win figure of 15,000 times the bet, which is quite high for an iSoftBet Hold & Win slot. The rest of the game is not quite so extraordinary. Well made and all, with decent artwork, a nice soundtrack etc., good for players who like to plunge themselves into ancient belief systems. But the features themselves are tough to quantify as being mega. The Gorgon's Gaze modifier adds spice to the base game and may even help propel players into the bonus round. Once in, the bonus game is a pretty straightforward session of hitting money symbols and hopefully as many Boosters as possible to pep their values. Handy Boosters, to be sure, yet all they can do is collect or multiply. Few would rue these effects, should they help produce a tidy win, though they're not the most imaginative extras in a Hold & Win game.

So that leaves the max win and the grid expansion feature. If you consider those two things to be pretty nifty, then Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win probably earns its 'mega' status. Otherwise, Gaze of Gold Mega Hold & Win is a strong addition to iSoftBet's bulging sack of Hold & Win games, but not sure it'll go on to be one of its classics.