Golden Tsar Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Golden Tsar Review

Red Tiger deserves credit for “expanding their thinking” into allowing expanded symbols also in the base game, which is something their last book slot release brought to the table for the first time. Golden Tsar is more of a follow-up game in that regard, and we can understand that they want to take advantage of this innovation on more than one game. The mechanics are not quite the same in this game as Ali Baba’s Luck though, but they are quite similar. The math model however, is a very different thing altogether.

It all plays out in a massive hallway inside the Tsar families castle, and you will spin 6 reels, 4 rows with 30 fixed ways to win. This is already a welcome break from the over-used book slot formula, but that’s far from the only twist to the tale you’ll benefit from here. The base game comes with premium symbols that will expand when their respective meters have been filled. This is refreshing in a series where nothing much usually happens before you eventually trigger the all-important bonus round.

You can place bets between 10p and £40 per spin across all platforms and devices, and the game flows smoothly on both Android, iOS and Windows units. Of course, there is a bonus round in this game too, and it comes with 1 randomly chosen expanding symbol. This is pretty close to the book formula again, but you can also expand the other premium symbols during the feature. 

What are the bonus features?

The bonus features are quite balanced between the base game and the bonus round, and the base game is all about the Royal Expand feature. Above the reels you’ll see 4 members of the Tsar family, including the Tsar himself of course, and these are the premium symbols in the game.

Interesting fact: The prototypes of the characters in the slot were the Emperor of Russia Nicholas II and his family. The picture below shows Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna.

Each premium symbol on display has a circular bonus meter around the portrait, and you fill the meter by landing winning combos with either of the Tsar family symbols. The Royal Expand feature is triggered when you fill one or more of the bonus meters.

The Tsar family symbol meters do not reset between spins, but after a meter has been filled and activated it starts with a zero charge again. The 1x4 expanded symbols pay even if they land on non-adjacent reels, and you only need 2 expanded symbol reels at minimum to win. This means that you can expect quite a lot of action from this feature.

The big, ornamented golden egg is the scatter symbol in this game, and it also serves double duty as the wild symbol. This means that it will step in for all regular symbols to help you form winning combos, but it will also trigger the free spins bonus round when you land at least 3 anywhere on the same spin.

When you land 3 golden egg scatters, you will see the egg open up to reveal 9 free spins. One of the Tsar premium symbols will then be selected randomly as the “chosen symbol”. The meter of the chosen symbol gets filled before the feature plays out, and it will remain full throughout the bonus round.

This means that all instances of the chosen symbol will expand during the free spins round, and you can also fill up the other symbol meters for even more expanded symbol wins. These will naturally reset again however, but you can certainly expect some decent wins whenever you trigger the bonus round.

How to play

Red Tiger has a clean and modern game interface that remains the same for each game. This creates a sense of familiarity, and we will here walk you through everything you should know up front before you start playing Golden Tsar slot.

Down to the left you’ll see the Stake button, and here you can set your bet level between 10p and £40 per spin. This is a somewhat slim bet range, but this is something we have become used to from this developer. They follow their own ideas about these things, which deviate a bit from the norm.

Anyway, you can then check out the paytable via the hamburger menu up in the right-hand side corner. The first slide gives you a close up of the Tsar family this game is all about, and then you have a couple of slides informing you about the 2 main bonus features. The 4th slide displays all the symbol combination values, and this is a static paytable per usual from Red Tiger.

You will therefore see the line bet win each symbol can deliver, and you can divide the values by the number of paylines (30 in this case) to find out how much each combo is worth per total stake. The Tsar himself is worth 25x for 6 on a payline, while the lowest value premium symbol pays 7.2x for 6 matching symbols.

The low value royals pay between 6x and 3x, and you need between 3 and 6 matching symbols from the uttermost left to right to win.

Finally, you can switch on the turbo play mode via the double arrow icon, and this increases the pace of the gameplay significantly. You can also set up between 10 and 100 autospins via the autoplay icon, and a loss limit needs to be set before you can get started. Of course, you can also spin the reels manually via the golden circular arrow button down to the right.

Where to play Golden Tsar?

Red Tiger has become a rising star since they partnered up with NetEnt, and any new game from this developer can usually be found across more than 100 different online casinos. This means that you have plenty of options as to where you can play Golden Tsar slot, and we will certainly do our best to assist you on your way here.

You can get started with real money play right now if you feel ready for it. You can, of course, also finished reading the review, as there is more to check out further down. If you have some experience with book type slots, you might already know that this game is something you will enjoy.

If you are brand new to the concept of book slots, or you have little experience with slots in general, you might wanna try the free demo version of the game first. We just happen to have it installed right here on this page for you. It’s a great way to learn the gameplay, and then you will know for sure if this is gonna be worth your time and money. Follow the link to the very top of this page, and test Golden Tsar for free right away.

The 200 Spins Golden Tsar Experience

Having already played Red Tiger’s Ali Baba’s Luck quite a lot, we immediately recognized the similarities to Golden Tsar. This is a less volatile and more forgiving game however, but the potential is also a lot lower. We like the idea of expanding symbols in the base game, and were eager to see if the Tsar and his family would share their riches with us.

We kept the bet level at the default of £2 per spin, and after some initial dead spins and smaller wins, things started to heat up as the Tsar Family meters were getting filled up. You can check out all the highlights in the video, and read about them as we lay out our 200 spins experience in some detail below.

The Tsar meter got filled first. Reels 1 and 2 expanded, which gave us a 6x win. Not long after it was the young Prince’s turn to get his meter filled, and this landed us our first “big win” of 15x for 3 expanded symbols. What followed was a bunch of dead spins with a minute win in the middle, and then we suddenly landed 3 golden egg scatters.

This triggered the anticipated free spins bonus round, and we got 9 spins. Watching which symbol gets chosen can be somewhat nerve wrecking, but we got lucky enough to have the highest value Tsar symbol as the special chosen symbol. This landed us a 6x win immediately, and the half-filled meters of the other symbols are carried over into the bonus round.

This didn’t help us much however, as we only got wins with the mighty Tsar. No complaints about that really, as he is the highest payer of the bunch. Most of the time we got 2 expanded Tsar symbols giving us 6x wins though, and we crossed our fingers for a strong ending. This never really manifested however, but all the double expanded Tsar symbol wins gave us a total payout of 49.7x our stake.

Review Summary

Red Tiger pretty much revolutionized the Book slot mechanic with Ali Baba’s Luck, and Golden Tsar follows closely in the previous game's footsteps. You will benefit from expanding symbols in the base game here also, but now you need to fill up a meter for each symbol instead of automatically getting expanding symbols from the winning symbols of the previous spin.

Golden Tsar is also a less volatile game than Ali Baba, but the max win potential is now reduced to 1936x (instead of 5,000x). This is a significant drop, but the good news is that you can place up to 4 times higher bets per spin in this game. The bonus round comes with a randomly chosen expanding symbol, much like regular book slots, but you also have the possibility of expanding more than the chosen symbol here.

Pros

• Expanding symbols meter in the base game
• Free spins with chosen expanding symbol
• Other symbols than the chosen one can also expand via the meters

Cons

• RTP of 95.77 % is a bit below average (beware of RTP ranges)

If you love Golden Tsar you should also try:

If you’re into the book slot series, we have 140 titles you can check out in our catalog at the time of writing. The most popular is Book of Dead, of course, but there are plenty of off-shoots that are worth checking out also. We will recommend some of the best ones for you below, and you can follow the respective links to find out more about each game.

Ali Baba's Luck - is the first book slot that allowed for expanding symbols also in the base game. This is a small revolution in the series, and in our view it makes for a much more balanced gaming experience. This is a highly volatile title, but wins above 5,000x is also possible. If you liked the game at hand, this is really a must try from Red Tiger.

Book of Oz - is a somewhat innovative take on the book slot mechanic, as it allows for indefinite respins of each individual reel. This can be done after every spin, but how much each respin costs will be calculated on a case by case basis. The volatility is high, and you can win up to 5,000x your stake (which is the standard max win in most book slots). The bonus round comes with a chosen expanding symbol.

Book of Shadows - is also a highly unusual book type slot, as it comes with a choice of 3, 4 or 5 rows (and 10, 15 or 20 ways to win). The usual 5,000x potential has been beefed up to a whopping 30,338x your stake here, which alone makes this NoLimit City title worth checking out. You can also lock up to 4 reels after every spin, but this can be somewhat expensive if you lock scatters. The bonus round is the standard book slot chosen symbol feature.

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