It’s April and we’re starting to unthaw thanks to Play’n GO’s Forge of Gems title, the fifth installment in the Swedish company’s growing Gem series, which started back in 2015 with Wizard of Gems, followed by Perfect Gems, Frozen Gems and Prizm of Gems.

Introduced as “the hottest game in town,” the high volatility 5-reel, 3-row game, with payways ranging from 243 up to 36,288, centers on an actual forge or furnace where precious stones are augmented to their highest potential. The iGaming supplier describes this version as “grittier” than the other titles in the Gems range, with its Steampunk aesthetic complementing the game’s “retro-futuristic style.”

Pay table:

The game’s lower paying symbols include 10, J, Q, K and A card values and are worth 0.3-0.4x the stake for five-of-a-kind, while premium rubies, citrines, topaz and sapphires are worth 0.5 to 1 times the bet for a five-of-a-kind win.

Win ways are awarded when combinations of three or more matching symbols land on adjacent reels from left to right. Each symbol that is part of a winning combination drops from the grid via the cascade feature, after which, symbols from overhead in the Forge Reel cascade down to refill any empty positions, for potentially additional wins. The process ends when wins no longer appear.

Diamonds are wild and substitute for all symbols except for scatters. Landing five of them pays 3x the bet, but most of the time they appear to help form a winning way.

Forge Reel:

The games’s five-by-three grid features a Forge Reel, which is an extra reel that can be found along the top of the video slot. Unique symbols appear on this reel enhancing the grid via special modifying symbols, Universal Multipliers and forming Stacked Wilds.

When the Forge Reel is activated by cascades, its special symbols drop down onto the game’s main grid and one of their six modifiers takes effect. They are:

• Multiplier – increases the win multiplier by one. The win multiplier resets between paid spins.
• Vertical Wild – turns all symbols except scatters into wilds on the reel.
• Horizontal Wild – turns matching symbols on the row into wilds.
• Vertical Splitter – all matching symbols on the reel are split, increasing ways to win.
• Horizontal splitter – splits symbols on its row, except scatters, and is also wild.
• Blank symbols – these are removed when cascading.

Gem Box:

Players who land at least three of the red jewel scatters are awarded one of the Gem Box features, with three awarding 20x the bet and 8 or 10 free spins, 4 scatters will get you 30x the bet and 10 or 15 free spins, and hitting all five scatters awards 40x the bet along with 10, 15, or 20 free spins. Blank symbols are removed from the Forge Reel during the Gembox bonus and a multiplier is guaranteed.

The win multiplier never resets in free spins, and the win multiplier that is active on the triggering spin will be the one in the bonus round. Furthermore, because there is no jewel scatter in free spins, the feature is not re-triggerable.

It is possible for players to earn wins up to 20,000x their stake, by forming unique symbol combinations together with the splitting symbols. A large number of splitting symbols can appear on the grid at one time. This gives players as many as 36,288 win ways, let alone the possible x37 multiplier.

Unmatched series:

Commenting on what is sure to be a hit, Head of Games for Play’n GO, Charlotte Miliziano, said…

“Our series are unmatched. Each game plays its part in a much bigger picture and this is just one of the reasons that we have the most diverse portfolio in the industry with the best performance over time.

“Each game exudes quality, and we continue to develop from that, series like the Gems titles show that we are consistent in quality but can always take our games to the next level.”