Midas Golden Touch Christmas Edition: Slot Overview
The man with the golden touch returns in an updated Xmas version of Thunderkick‘s mythologically themed 2019 release, Midas Golden Touch. The Christmas Edition offers almost the same brand of entertainment as the original, with some alterations and new features. The most noticeable change is the Christmas Edition theme, bringing a positive uptick in the return value and introducing a bonus buy option for players who want to jump directly into the free spins round, where a respin feature can be utilized.
For those unfamiliar with or who have forgotten the infamous story, King Midas was granted the ability to turn everything he touched into gold. What started as a blessing turned into a curse when he inadvertently turned his daughter into a statue. Midas Golden Touch Christmas Edition retains the stunning visual appeal of the original, with heavy golden tones and a building that looks like it has been touched by King Midas. The Christmas Edition adds a festive makeover to the surroundings, featuring Christmas trees, decorations, and more. While some may argue that King Midas ruled Phrygia in the 8th century BC, long before the concept of Christmas, the game takes creative license to bring holiday cheer to the mythical theme.
As before, Midas Golden Touch Christmas Edition is played on a 5-reel, 3-row gaming panel with 15 paylines. The default RTP has increased slightly this time, now noted as 96.17%, and there’s a bonus buy feature where users can purchase free spins. The cost for this is 80 times the base bet, and when doing so, the return value increases even further to 96.43%. The stake range is 10 cents to $/€100 per spin in this highly volatile slot, with one core goal being to land winning combinations made up of at least 3 matching symbols starting from the leftmost reel.
On the lower end of the paytable are the 9 to A card ranks, paying out 5 to 7.5 times the bet when 5 matching royals create a win. Then, there’s a chest, a chalice, a crown, and King Midas as the premium symbols, paying 15 to 75 times the bet for a 5-of-a-kind hit. King Midas’ golden hands serve as the game’s wild symbol and appear on all reels. Wilds have the same payout value as the normal Midas pay symbol and can be used to substitute for any regular pay symbol. Additionally, any payline including a wild receives a multiplier based on the number of wilds in the line. The multiplier values are x2, x4, x8, x16, or x32 when 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 wilds are part of the winning combination, respectively.
Midas Golden Touch Christmas Edition: Slot Features
Additional features in Midas Golden Touch Christmas Edition include a free spins bonus round where a special respin mechanic comes into play. Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols awards 10, 15, or 20 free spins, respectively. While free spins are active, collecting 3 scatter symbols during the respin feature grants an extra +10 free spins.
Any win in the free spins round triggers the respin feature. During the respin feature, any winning symbols are locked in place while the remaining symbols respin. The respin feature continues until no additional winning symbols are locked. Additionally, a single random wild is placed on the reels at the start of each free spin.
Midas Golden Touch Christmas Edition: Slot Verdict
Kind of odd to celebrate the Christmas season with a character rumored to have been around before the special day was even invented, but hey, no big deal, this is gambling, not a history lesson. Then again, Midas Golden Touch was released about four years before this Christmas version, and with the speed slots are churned out (not to mention their sheer quantity), does that length of time constitute iGaming Ancient History? Whatever the answer, Midas Golden Touch was a solid, fairly straightforward slot that plays out just as well in the Christmas Edition. Better, really, due to the virtually unnoticeable increase in RTP (though flexible RTP wasn’t really a thing back then, so you knew what you were getting) and, for bonus buyers, the opportunity to dive right into the main feature.
Back when Midas Golden Touch came out, Thunderkick wasn’t exactly renowned for being feature-buy enthusiasts. This situation has since totally changed, where now, a buy feature in a Thunderkick slot is nothing new. Following on from that, since Midas Golden Touch hit the scene, a bunch of extra winning symbol respin-style games have accumulated on the gambling landscape, from the scare fest of Serial to lighter renditions like Hula Balua, for example. What separates Midas Golden Touch Christmas Edition from many of them, however, is the way more wilds in a winning line lead to a larger multiplier. A feature so good, Thunderkick has used it not only in the Midas games but also in Phoenix Paradise and Lava Lava.
In other words, reviewing Midas Golden Touch Christmas Edition was a bit of a who’s who of the gambling world, potentially influencing and/or being influenced by a number of different sources. Putting aside the name-dropping, Midas Golden Touch Christmas Edition is a solid Christmas slot, in some ways arguably better than the original, with the same 10,100 x the bet max win to play for, set within an Xmas meets Ancient History environment.