Gem Queen Slot Machine
Gem Queen is a 5-reel slot from Playtech that will evoke a tinge of nostalgia in players. Nostalgia for the time when all video slots looked like garbage because the web was in its infancy and graphic designers were still getting to grips with determining how best to represent real world elements on a flat computer screen.
It would be no exaggeration to say that Gem Queen looks awful, but that should be tempered by the acknowledgement that there is more to slots than graphics alone. Gameplay, features and fun are all equally important factors, and it’s possible for cheap-looking games to prove extremely rewarding once you hang up your preconceptions and give them a go.
The Queen of Egypt
The title may not make it clear, but the Egyptian soundtrack and symbols certainly do: Gem Queen is all about Cleopatra. Quite why games developers are so fascinated with Cleopatra and all things Egyptian is an enduring mystery and one that shan’t be resolved in this review.
It would be fair to say though that Cleopatra slots will continue to be churned out at a dizzying rate for the foreseeable future. Gem Queen is stocked with gold and gemstone-based symbols that all have some sort of Egyptian connection. The wild is played by Cleopatra herself, the only character to surface in the game.
Game Controls
With a background of pyramids shimmering under a fierce sun, there’s no mistaking the setting for Gem Queen. Graphically, the background – like the reels themselves – is pretty low-key – with little in the way of depth or detail.
Across the bottom of the page, the value of lines, bet value and suchlike are displayed, while the play button looms large to the right of the reels. It looks oddly isolated, abandoned in acres of space of its own, but this is the style Playtech have plumped for.
Hold the spin button for a second and autoplay controls will appear, allowing you to set the number of spins to be taken on your behalf, or until the feature is activated.
Audio controls can be found on the top right of the page along with controls that allow you to skip the intro video, disable the splash screen and toggle game sounds on or off.
Below the reels, you can view the number of active paylines – 25 – and can view the line bet and total bet. In demo play, there’s no way to adjust any of these settings – that or Playtech’s interface is so user unfriendly they’ve hidden the means of doing so. Actually, scrap that: it is possible to adjust the line bet value, this reviewer has just discovered, a feat which is achieved by clicking on the discrete arrow to the left of the reels. Tap on it to activate a slide out display, where the line bet can be set from €0.01 all the way up to €100.
Winning Symbols
As wild, Cleopatra is the queen of her own game. She’ll appear on reels 2-4 only, either during the main game or when hitting the feature. As is the norm, wild will substitute for any of the regular symbols except for the scatter and free games symbols.
Scatter is played by the Gem Queen logo, and can appear anywhere on the reels. With 2 or more scatters in view, the payout will be multiplied by the total bet to boost your winnings.
Collapsing Reels
The free games symbol – which is marked as such – will appear on reels 1, 3 and 5 only during the main game. Land 3 or more of these symbols on the reels to activate 15 free games complete with a collapsing reels multiplier.
Collapsing reels is a feature that can appear in both the main game and the free game, and it involves all of the symbols on screen disappearing off the bottom, to be replaced by new symbols dropping from above. Each time you notch up a winning combo, the reels will collapse again, a pattern that’s repeated until you fail to score a win on the reels.
A Gem of a Game?
Gem Queen is a good example of the mantra to not judge a book by its cover. This 5-reel slot looks rubbish, but it’s actually got some pretty nifty features built in including collapsing reels and free games once you give it a chance.
