Cleopatra Plus Pokies
Cleopatra has been a cornerstone of the IGT pokie range for years and was really starting to show its age. This ancient artefact has now been dusted off and given a new lease of life as Cleopatra Plus, a far more sophisticated game with updated graphics, improved features and different layout, but it has retained its basic theme just enough to keep fans of the original happy.
This stylish game has a well-designed background image of the pyramids silhouetted against a setting sun and visible through the reels to give the symbols the appearance of floating against them. There’s a colourful framework to the actual reels and below them is the control panel that has various winged statues and cobras to give it a bit more visual impact.
This game has retained the 5-reel, 3-row format, but there’s now 40 paylines running across it, with players having the option to stake just 0.40 on a spin or go all the way up to an 800.00 maximum. It’s also got an interesting Level Up feature that unlocks extra rewards during the bonus rounds, alongside more conventional bonuses such as wild substitutions, scatter payouts and multipliers.
Playing Cleopatra Plus
Like many pokies, the playing card symbols from 9 through to A will line up for the smaller payouts. Landing 3 or more 9 symbols on a line running left to right will be worth from 2 coins to 40 coins, while the A is worth up to 75 coins.
The picture symbols are beautifully designed and include iconic images from ancient Egypt such as the Ahnk, a colourful Fan, Eye of Horus and Scarab Beetle, but a selection of Egyptian Gods top off the table, with each being worth 20x, 75x or 200x when landing on 3, 4 or 5 reels across a payline. Players can pick one of these as their Deity, which will appear more frequently and collect followers along the way, which is all part of the Level Up feature.
Cleopatra Plus
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Bonus Features
Here’s where Cleopatra Plus gets really interesting, as some of the bonus features are highly unusual and bring a whole new dimension to the game.
Some, however, are fairly standard, although none the worse for it. The highest paying symbol is the game logo, which is worth 50x, 250x and 1500x the coin value when 3, 4 or 5 stop across a line, while it’s also the wild, replacing others if it can then complete a winning combination.
The value of any win completed by the wild symbol will be doubled and to make it easier, it will be stacked on any reels it appears on, with up to 10 wilds possible.
Level Up Features
Whenever the chosen Deity and a bonus symbol appear at once, players collect a follower and once enough have been gathered in a box at the top of the reels, they unlock certain extra rewards in the free spins games.
Those free spins are triggered by any 3 or more bonus scatter symbols landing in any positions, but before they begin, players will need to select a ‘Realm’, from Alexandria, the Nile River, Pyramids and so on.
This opens up a map and players are invited to use the followers so far collected to unlock multipliers, cash awards and free spins on different parts of their chosen maps. This is all done with some impressive animations across some highly detailed maps and while each game starts with 5 free spins, it’s possible to unlock many more with followers placed in the right sections.
Other extra features that followers will earn include additional scatter symbols, stacked Deities, a big multiplier on the last spin, a Super Spin with a potentially huge award and further followers to use on the next map.
It looks like a pretty complex system, but once it has been played, everything happens logically and is really nothing to be wary of.
The Verdict
IGT have taken the bare bones of their most popular pokie and completely re-invented it for today. While some of the basics remain, the whole Level Up system, with followers and maps is a huge step forward, although similar features can be found on other games in their range as well.
One thing worth noting is that the rewards get better with more time spent playing the game, although it doesn’t need to be all in one session, as the game will remember the IP address it was accessed from and players will keep their followers from the last time they were there.
Anyone who takes a trip back in time to this pokie will find a game with a classic theme, but with exciting features that are right up to date.