With a reel setup that looks like organ pipes you might see in church, it’s clear from the get-go that Boomerang Studios has created something unusual with Gems of Egypt. Their innovative Dynamic Reels feature only strengthens this first impression, as you’ll see elaborately ornamented reel blockers shift configuration on each spin. In addition, the game comes with so-called Connecta Ways, which is another innovation from this independent developer.
It all sounds very fancy, but it boils down to a way of winning where you need 3 to 6 matching symbols to touch from left to right. You could say that this makes it easier to spot the paylines, but it also limits the ways to win somewhat. The highly unusual reel setup would look like this if totally exposed: 5-6-7-8-9-10. However, the Dynamic Reel blockers move up and down on each spin, and this causes the number of rows and paylines to vary accordingly.
Kudos to Boomerang for taking a different approach to a theme riddled with cliches, but unfortunately this game is a good example of how novelty and innovation alone is not enough to create a fun gaming experience. The volatility is medium to high, and the game comes with a decent enough potential of 4,818x your stake, but the constant changing of the reel set does not really add any real value to the experience.
In fact, it feels kind of annoying to be blocked all the time, and even the bonus round is not much different except some wild stacks. We were intrigued at first, but our 200 spins test session (more about that below) did the opposite of winning us over. The Dynamic Reels feature has potential however, but our feeling is that something more needs to be done with it to make it feel beneficial and fun. We have no idea exactly what that would be though, and we’ll leave that to the developers to figure out.
The defining feature of this game is the Dynamic Reels. This feature makes every spin unique, as the size of active rows and paylines will change per spin. There is a method to the madness however, as the seemingly random reel modifiers follow only one rule. This rule says that each reel has to be 1 symbol higher or lower than the reel to the immediate left.
A cute looking Cleopatra is the wild symbol in Gems of Egypt Connecta Ways, and she will step in for all regular symbols. This will help you form winning combinations, but keep in mind that the wild symbols cannot step in for the scatter. There is not much more to say about the base game features really, as Gems of Egypt is mainly about the bonus round.
The scatter symbol is a golden ornamented scarab in this game, and you need to land at least 3 anywhere on the reels to trigger the free spins round. You will first get a scatter win of either 5x, 20x, 75x or 100x, depending on how many scatters you landed from 3 to 6. However, you can also trigger the free spins round completely randomly while playing, without the need to land any scatters.
You will be granted 8 free spins no matter how many scatters you land or not land, and the bonus round plays out very similar to the base game. You will now benefit from stacked wilds on reels 2 to 6 however, which can be of some help when they are not blocked by the dynamic reels blockers. You can also retrigger the bonus round by landing at least 3 scatters on the same free spin, and this gives you 8 new spins for a brand new go.
The game interface is rather minimalistic from Boomerang Studios, and everything you need is found via the hamburger menu down in the left-hand side corner. Here, we will walk you through everything you need to know about playing Gems of Egypt Connecta Ways slot, and get you ready for the gameplay in no-time.
The hamburger menu opens up a stack of different menus for you, and we always start by checking out the paytable and the game settings. Unfortunately, there are not too many settings to adjust here, and you are pretty much only given the choice of turning off the sound, or keeping it on. This is a bit slim, as we enjoy being able to tweak games with different adjustments.
It is what it is, however, so we’ll move on to the paytable. The features are described on different slides before you get to the actual symbol values. The paytable is dynamic, which means that the respective combination values will update according to your chosen bet level. The symbols are not your typical egyptian style artifacts and gods here, but instead you’ll find a bunch of different colored gemstones (as the title of the game suggests).
The white diamond is the highest paying symbol, and will give you 10x your stake for 6 on a payline. There are 4 premium gems and 4 lower value stones, and the lower value symbols pay 4x your stake. If you scroll further, you’ll find the game rules summed up in bullet point form, which gives you a nice and brief overview of how everything works.
To set your bet level you need to click the coin stack icon, and the bet range goes from 25p to £35 per spin. You can then set up the autoplay feature, unless you want to spin the reels manually, of course. The autoplay feature comes with between 5 and 500 autospins, and there are no advanced options to stop the feature automatically here.
Boomerang is not yet a very well established developer, and they have yet to rise in prominence with both players and casino operators. For this reason you cannot expect to find any new games from them in a lot of casinos. We will present you with your best options for playing Gems of Egypt Connecta Ways below, as there are some opportunities you should know about.
For the above reasons, you can have a bit of a hard time finding a casino to play this game at. However, we scan the whole market for you every day, so you will always find the most complete list ofcasinos to play Gems of Egypt Connecta Wayshere on this page. Simply follow the link to the top of the review, and you can pick and choose from different places to play and their respective welcome offers.
There is no doubt that this game comes with a rather unusual reel setup, and the Dynamic Reels feature doesn’t exactly make it less of an oddball. It’s therefore very understandable that players might wanna try the free demo version first, before a final decision is made one way or the other. The good news is that we just happen to have theGems of Egypt Connecta Ways demo gameinstalled and ready at the very top of this page for you. Follow the link up there, and get started with free play immediately.
Unusual games are always fun to check out, even if they don’t always pass the test of time. We looked forward to seeing what these Dynamic Reels could do for us, and crossed our fingers for a bonus round to trigger within our first 200 spins.
Our session started out pretty uneventful, except for the ever-changing reel setup dancing around. The medium to high volatility gave us exactly what we expected. We landed some smaller wins here and there between the dead spins. However, things can change quickly in the world of online slots, and suddenly we landed a “big win” of 20x our stake.
The celebration of this so-called big win was a bit over the top however, as we don’t really need a lengthy count-up with a money fountain for these kinds of mediocre wins. The scarab scatters started to land in teasing ways towards the middle of the session, and it seemed like the game was building up to something.
We finally landed the 3rd scarab scatter we needed, after a lengthy teaser reel spin that kept us on edge for a small eternity. After the initial small scatter win, we got started with 8 free spins in the tank. We saw a lot of the stacked wilds on the reels, but hardly benefitted from them at all. Many times they were blocked or half-way blocked, which was annoying as hell.
The whole bonus round turned out to be a massive disappointment, as we only won a total of 6.6x our stake. That’s how it can go with this kind of volatility however, and we hope your beginners luck is better than ours was with this game.
Gems of Egypt Connecta Ways is a pretty original take on the Egyptian theme, but originality alone is not enough to make a good game. As refreshing as it is to be spared the usual egyptian gods cliches, we cannot say we enjoyed our 200 spins session all that much. The Dynamic Reels might be innovative and somewhat intriguing to look at for a while, but in the end they bring more frustration than joy to the table in our opinion.
It’s annoying that your winning chances are shrunk down on so many spins, and where megaways engine games seem full of vibrant opportunity, these reel modifying blockers feel more like prison bars. At least they could have made the grid wide open during the bonus round to make it feel more special, but no, the free spins round feels like the base game with stacked wilds that many times are mostly hidden behind the blockers. The 4,818x potential is decent enough, but we don’t see this game being the big break Boomerang Studios might be looking for.
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We currently have 240games where the reel set is changingin our catalog, so feel free to take your pick. We have also taken the liberty of hand selecting a few similar games for you below, and you can find out more about them by following the respective links.
Wild Joker Stacks- is another game from Boomerang that comes with their innovative Connecta Ways feature. This is a classic looking fruit slot, and the Row Power feature allows you to choose between 3, 4 or 5 rows here. You can also choose the win multiplier of either 2x, 3x or 4x, and wins up to 28,200x your stake is possible in this game.
Spartacus Megaways- comes with a very similar feature to the Dynamic Reels the game at hand sports. A red curtain can cover up to half the reel size of each reel from above, and you can play with up to a whopping 1 million ways to win here. The soundtrack sets a dramatic tone, and you can win up to 10,000x your stake on this highly volatile game from WMS.
Valley Of The Gods 2- is an egyptian themed game from Yggdrasil, and it also comes with an unusual reel setup and a reel set that changes during gameplay. This game is all about the respins feature, where you will benefit from extra lives to keep you going, as well as a progressive multiplier and a stacked wild feature. Wins well above 5,000x is possible here, and the volatility is medium to high, just like the game at hand.
