Champion of the Underworld: Slot Overview

Champion of the Underworld is a Gigablox-driven entry in Yggdrasil Gaming’s ‘of the Underworld’ line. Did we miss an announcement somewhere? Because Yggdrasil hasn’t really been shouting about an ‘of the Underworld’ collection until now. One title that seems connected is Hades Gigablox, since it also uses Gigablox and shares an underworld setting. Maybe the ‘of the Underworld’ label is something the studio plans to lean into more going forward. For the moment, we have Champion of the Underworld which, alongside Gigablox, packs in free spins, a free spins gamble option, Wild Fight, a multiplier, and a bonus buy.

To crown a champion down here, an arena-like battleground has been built where contenders clash to decide a victor. The active game grid sits in the middle, while ghostly onlookers surround it, seated beneath columns, with what appear to be turquoise flames and piles of skulls scattered across the scene. It clearly shares visual DNA with Hades Gigablox, and there are some unsettling touches, but it doesn’t hit with the same raw intensity Hades Gigablox delivered – think of that snake/skull horror wrapped around the reels or the more grotesque symbol set. Hashtag shudder. The soundtrack is pretty ‘core, though.

Digging further into Champion of the Underworld, we get a math model Yggdrasil Gaming rates as ‘Super High’ for volatility. There are multiple RTP configurations, with the highest set at 96% and the lowest dropping to 86%, depending on the market. To jump into this bout, players choose a stake of 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin, and the game runs smoothly across any device you prefer.

The action plays out on a 6×4, 4,096 ways to win layout, where wins land when three or more matching symbols connect left to right on adjacent reels starting from the first reel. Each spin can see reels combine into oversized Gigablox symbols, ranging from 2×2 to 4×4 in size. For payout purposes, Gigablox are treated as separate 1×1 symbols. The game uses eight paying symbols: four chain-wrapped clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts, followed by four creatures presumably battling for the champion title. Hitting six-of-a-kind returns 0.5x the bet for the card suits or 1-2x the bet for the monsters. To round things out, skull symbols act as wild and can replace any high or low-paying symbol.

Champion of the Underworld: Slot Features

Backing up the underworld journey are mechanics like Wild Fight plus free spins that include a gamble mini-feature and a rising multiplier.

Wild Fight

The Wild Fight feature can trigger randomly in the base game and on every free spin. When it kicks in, Hades fights each high pay symbol in view. If Hades wins, that symbol turns wild; high pay Gigablox are included too.

Free Spins

Free spins scatters may appear at standard size or as Gigablox. When at least 5 scatters are visible, free spins start. Each triggering free spin scatter is worth 1 free spin. On entry to the bonus, players get the chance to gamble for more free spins, provided they have won less than 20. To gamble, choose one sword from a set of ten swords. Picking a golden sword means a win, while a broken sword means a loss. There are two gamble levels, and a failed gamble removes all free spins.

During free spins, Wild Fight is active on every spin. The bonus also includes a win multiplier. Each time Hades changes a symbol into a wild, the multiplier increases by +1. Converting 9 symbols into wilds awards an x2 multiplier, another 11 transformations raise it to x3, 13 more push it to x5, 15 more lift it to x10, and a final 17 additional wild transformations grant an x25 multiplier. At each milestone, +2 free spins are awarded.

Buy Bonus

Where available, players may pay 90x the bet to enter the bonus round with 5 free spins, or pay 1,000x the bet to buy 20 free spins.

Champion of the Underworld: Slot Verdict

Champion of the Underworld lands fairly well; it captures a solid underworld atmosphere, with plenty of monsters and fantasy-styled visuals. A slightly cartoonish touch softens the mood, making it feel more light-hearted and less menacing than Hades Gigablox, and there’s noticeably less swagger than the Hades portrayal in that earlier game. Overall, Champion of the Underworld feels a bit less bold, even though it’s attractive to look at and put together to a good standard. The longer it sat in the memory, the more it seemed to fade next to its predecessor.

The gameplay follows a similar pattern: perfectly fine, but it didn’t hit as hard as two earlier related slots – Hades Gigablox and Of Sabers and Monsters (which itself was closely tied to the Viking’s Go range). It’s tricky to pin down. Champion of the Underworld has plenty of the right components to excite, yet they came across more like separate ideas than a smoothly connected package. It delivered a reasonable level of enjoyment in play, but there are stronger Gigablox/Wild Fight/Wild Hunt titles out there from Yggdrasil Gaming and its partners. That said, Champion of the Underworld can still deliver when things line up, with a top win of 10,000x the stake.

All in all, it doesn’t have the jaw-dropping punch of some earlier entries, but if heading back to the underworld to trade blows with monsters sounds appealing, then Champion of the Underworld is a decent pick. Even so, it doesn’t really bring anything that Yggdrasil hasn’t already executed better before. There’s nothing awful about Champion of the Underworld, but there’s also nothing truly essential that demands it be pushed to the top of a must-try list.