Battle Royal Introduction

Heads will roll! This latest Play’n GO release takes you back to the Tudor era, when the Kingdom of England was ruled by its famous monarchs. With a strong historical angle, it revolves around King Henry the 8th and his notorious 6 wives. Ironically, Henry was known to enjoy gambling and dice, and it’s hard not to wonder what he’d think about starring in an online slot centuries later. Still, it’s his six marriages that define his legacy most of all—especially the execution of two of his wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, which also sits at the heart of this game’s narrative.

Battle Royal is a highly volatile slot, rated 10 out of 10 by Play’n GO, featuring a random base game mechanic along with a free spins feature that can also lead to a bonus picking game.

From a visual standpoint, it’s instantly recognizable as Play’n GO thanks to the familiar interface and art style. The setting looks like a castle interior, giving it a medieval atmosphere, with the reels framed by red lion drapes. The presentation is fairly straightforward, particularly in the base game, and while it introduces a few interesting twists, it still feels like a classic slot built on a 5-reel, 3-row and 20 paylines format. And that’s perfectly fine.

Battle Royal Symbols & Paytable

Battle Royal features the King Henry 8th Wild symbol, a Coat of Arms Scatter, Henry’s infamous 6 Wives as the premium symbols, plus traditional card suits as the lower-value symbols. A nice touch is that the paytable shows winnings in cash amounts based on your current bet, which makes it quick and easy to understand. Put simply, there’s no guesswork about what it can pay. Well done, Play’n GO.

The high-paying symbols (the wives) appear in two versions—one in normal mode as shown in the screenshot above, and another where they’ve been beheaded and turned into wilds. This will become clearer as you read on.

Battle Royal Features & Free Spin Mode

The Royal Flush feature may activate randomly during the base game and changes all low-paying symbols into a single matching symbol.

When a Scatter appears on both the first and last reel, a feature choice is activated. The player then picks one of the winning Scatters to reveal which reward they receive – Free Spins or Long Live the King (pick bonus).

During Free Spins, the player must decide which of Henry’s Wives will be spared from the guillotine. On every spin, one guillotine on the reels will drop. If a Wife symbol is showing either completely, or with its top half visible on that reel, she is executed and that symbol becomes Wild for the rest of the Free Spins round. If only the bottom half of the symbol is visible on the top row, she cannot be beheaded and therefore won’t turn Wild. Free Spins carry on until only 1 Wife character symbol remains alive. If the wife chosen by the player is the one who survives, an extra instant prize is granted.

The last surviving Wife from Free Spins must then face a final decision via the guillotine reels. The player selects a guillotine reel for the Wife. One guillotine will then fall. If it drops on the reel where the Wife is located, she is beheaded and the Long Live the King pick bonus is triggered as well. If it falls on another reel, she lives and the game returns to the base round.

In the Long Live the King bonus feature, the player helps King Henry gather treasure and flee his haunted dungeon. Choose chests to win instant prizes. After each pick, the ghost of one of Henry’s wives moves across the screen over a row of chests. If Henry is positioned in the path of a ghost, he dies and the bonus feature ends immediately.

One chest hides a key. After finding the key, the player can either escape the dungeon to receive a mystery multiplier on their total winnings, or keep going by opening more chests to collect additional instant prizes. If the feature ends because Henry is caught by a ghost, the winnings accumulated in the round up to that point are paid out. The multiplier is only awarded if the player chooses to escape. If the bonus is entered through Free Spins, the multiplier applies to the combined total from the Free Spins and the bonus feature.

The optimum strategy when the Long Live the King bonus feature is triggered from the Free Spins is to escape as soon as you find the Key. If the Long Live the King bonus feature is triggered from the base game, the optimum strategy is to leave after picking four chests.

Battle Royal Conclusion

Even with its fairly inventive free spins mechanic and distinctive storyline, it still feels like a familiar Play’n GO title overall. It doesn’t come across as though there was a huge push to make it truly different or to set a new benchmark. Even the maximum win of 5000 times the stake is typical, and you’ve got a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of hitting it. Best of luck with that. Then again, landing a slot’s absolute max is almost always close to impossible.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, but it’s hard to shake the impression that it plays more like a re-skin than a genuinely new experience. It’s the kind of slot that might hold attention for a week or two before fading away, much like Gold King or Sizzling Spin.