Eye of the Storm - Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Introduction

In the past few years we’ve seen a ton of game developers releasing clones of Blueprint Gaming/Merkur’s Eye of Horus - and the latest clone comes from Pragmatic Play - and it’s called Eye of the Storm. Now, we should point out that Pragmatic Play aren’t actually the company who produced Eye of the Storm - they just host it on their online gambling platform. The slot has actually been made by a smaller partner studio called Reel Kingdom, who are still fairly new, but who appear to be making - so far - a positive impression on the industry.

Format and Betting Options

Eye of the Storm is built around a 5-reel, 3-row format, and there are 10 fixed paylines in play at all times. The slot can be played from as little as 0.10 credits per spin, and high-rollers will be pleased to learn the maximum bet is a whopping 250 credits per spin!

Graphics and Theme

To be honest, when it comes to the graphics of Eye of the Storm, we don’t feel as though Reel Kingdom/Pragmatic Play has done an outstanding job; the game just looks a little bland, and while the creative elements all render in crisp HD, there’s not a huge amount going on - so don’t expect to see any groundbreaking graphics here.

Eye of the Storm’s RTP and Volatility

Despite Eye of the Storm built around a relatively high volatility math model, Reel Kingdom (the company who made the slot) proclaim that the hit frequency is actually quite high - so you can expect to hit a win in the base-game roughly once in every 4 or 5 spins.

The game also has a very respectable RTP of 96.71% which is way above what we’re used to seeing in today’s ultra-competitive online gambling industry.

This RTP, we feel, is found most within the bonus round; from our testing experience, we found that the bonus round tends to pay more on average than other games of a similar mechanic - Eye of Horus being the most obvious example. This should suit those who like bonuses that actually pay. Just be aware, however, that the game does have a maximum win cap of just 1,000X, and actually landing the bonus round can be tough, often taking a few hundred spins to land.

Bonus Features

There’s a couple of bonuses and features to be aware of in Eye of the Storm, and in this part of our slot review, we’re going to be giving you a comprehensive look at what both of these entail - and what you can expect when triggering them for yourself.

Expanding Wilds

Similar to what you’re probably used to seeing in most Eye of Horus-inspired slots, the wilds symbols are expanding - both during the base-game and the main free-spins bonus round (details of which we’ll cover in just a moment.) Whenever a wild lands in view, it will expand to fill the entire reel it lands on - and these expanding wilds appear on reels 2, 3 and 4. It’s possible to land up to three wilds on a single spin, with wilds substituting for all symbols bar the scatter symbols.

Free Spins

As with all games following the same mechanic, Eye of the Storm’s biggest attraction is the free-spins bonus round which is triggered by landing 3, 4, or 5 of the scatter symbols anywhere in view. Doing so will award you 12 free spins, and you’ll also receive a cash value worth 2X, 20X or 50X, depending on the number of scatter symbols you landed.

Now, during the bonus round, whenever one or more of the expanding wild symbols lands in view, you’ll be awarded between one and five additional free spins. What’s more, each time a wild lands, the current lowest high-value symbol will be upgraded.

Max-win 1,000x

Volatility High

Top RTP 96.71%

Eye of the Storm Review

Unfortunately, while Reel Kingdom/Pragmatic Play are working hard to push out good, high-quality new content, Eye of the Storm isn’t a shining example of what the game developers are capable of. While the graphics may look a little better than older versions of the game - say, Eye of Horus from Blueprint, or Pharaoh’s Fortune from IGT there’s not much else going on.

Of course, there’s also the issue of the lack of creativity. Even when slots are clearly clones, we like to see what unique twists developers can come up with. Unfortunately, Reel Kingdom and Pragmatic Play seem to, again, have missed the boat a little bit when it comes to Eye of the Storm. There just aren’t enough differing factors to make the game a serious contender to the original Eye of Horus.

Bad news aside, there are a couple of good points which we should point out - one of which is the very nice payout percentage. The RTP comes in pretty high at 96.71%, and this, in our opinion, is seen quite clearly within the bonus round, where the top symbol managges to form 5-of-a-kind paylines quite regularly - despite paying just 50X your stake.

On the whole, Eye of the Storm isn’t the worst effort in the world - but we don’t feel it’s going to insanely popular, and, yet again, it seems to be another half-hearted release from a game developer that, otherwise, is known for pushing out quality, carefully-constructed slots and games.

Disclaimer: Eye of the Storm trademark / license is owned by Reel Kingdom. This site is not endorsed by Reel Kingdom.