Pragmatic Play

With the exponential growth of Bigwinboard, now recognised as one of the leading independent European iGaming news sites, we’re increasingly approached by game providers who want us to review their releases. It’s a bit of a gamble on their side, since we’ve earned a reputation as slayers of slots we don’t enjoy—though plenty of studios genuinely value the straightforward feedback we give.

Recently, we received a note from Pragmatic Play asking us to take a look at their portfolio, and to be completely honest it didn’t spark much excitement at first. For a long time, we’ve seen Pragmatic Play as a fairly generic provider that rarely grabs your attention. But, as we’ve seen happen with Red Tiger or Push Gaming, that could be about to shift.

We won’t dive deep into the company here—we’ll save that for the dedicated page we’re putting together—but since this is the first time we’re covering any of their titles, a brief intro feels appropriate.

The studio originally launched in 2007 as TopGame, before being rebranded and renamed Pragmatic Play in 2015, signalling a fresh start after some minor controversies. A lot has changed since then: today they’re a growing presence across major online casinos, and they also picked up the EGR Software Rising Star 2017 award.

Da Vinci’s Treasure Introduction

On first impression, the slot doesn’t immediately scream “different.” It carries the familiar Pragmatic feel, built on 5 reels, 3 rows and 25 pay lines. Bets run from €0.25 up to €125, and the game comes with a 96.53% theoretical return to player. That said, Pragmatic—much like Play’n GO, Novomatic, and many other studios—lets operators (casinos) select alternative RTP configurations, so it’s always worth checking which version you’re on. In some cases it may drop as low as 90.04%.

Before anyone gets too worked up about that—different settings can sometimes be required depending on the market. Some off-shore casinos may obviously exploit it, which is exactly why we only recommend the best online casinos in the industry. Also, Pragmatic Play (and Play’n GO) are upfront about this, which is more than can be said for plenty of other providers.

Theme-wise, it’s probably familiar territory. Yes—it’s another “book of” style game. Still, as you’ll notice, it’s not simply a copy and it brings enough of its own ideas to justify its place. A funny side note: for a while we got sidetracked by a discussion about how the main character John Hunter looks, and whether he’s more handsome than Rich Wilde (Book of Dead). What’s your take? Drop a comment below (lol).

Da Vinci’s Treasure Symbols

First up, credit where it’s due: Pragmatic Play has put together a paytable that’s genuinely easy to follow. It makes our work smoother and, more importantly, keeps things clear for players. There’s nothing more annoying than having to decipher confusing coin values tied to paylines and similar nonsense. That stuff should be banned from slots!

What you’ll find are the usual low-value card suit symbols, plus 5 premium icons shown as crossbows, a strange object we can’t quite identify, knapsacks, books, and our guy John Hunter. Naturally, he’s the highest-paying symbol, delivering 32 times the stake for 5 across a full pay line.

The wild symbol, featuring Leonardo Da Vinci, shows up only on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Da Vinci’s Treasure Bonus Features

The slot includes 3 bonus features, and 2 of them are fairly low-potential additions that seem mainly there to add variety. All features—including the free spins—are triggered by landing 3 bonus symbols on the middle reels. When that happens, the game randomly awards one of these 3 bonus features:

• Map Quest Feature – advance along a treasure map consisting of 23 squares. By spinning the wheel, you either move forward on the map while picking up increasing prizes, or the feature ends. If you reach the finish, you’re awarded a 100x win.
• Prize Picker – select one of 3 paintings to uncover a cash prize.
• Progressive Multiplier Free Spins – the feature you’ll really want to land, and for obvious reasons. Trigger it and you receive 12 free spins with a multiplier that increases by 1 each spin. So by the last spin you can hit a 12x multiplier, and with the possibility to re-trigger up to 60 free spins, you could potentially climb to a 60x multiplier. In that case, the top win potential of 48,000 times the stake can actually come into play.

Da Vinci’s Treasure Conclusion

We’re always interested in high variance, high potential slots of this type, which is exactly why we decided to review it. Visually, it didn’t blow us away, though it’s certainly not among the worst-looking games we’ve come across. Pragmatic slots—similar to Red Tiger—are known for being tough when it comes to triggering the bonus (free spins), and that definitely applies here too. It can be genuinely irritating to land 3 scatter symbols and still miss the free spins. That said, it’s a very high variance slot, and like most games sitting at that end of the volatility scale, it’s simply part of the deal.

The free spins mode, we have to admit, is highly entertaining. We like that Pragmatic didn’t just follow the same formula most providers use for their Book slots, and instead added their own spin on the bonus. On the final spin alone, you can win 9600 times the stake if you’re fortunate enough to land a full-screen of John Hunter symbols, since he can appear stacked on the reels. We all know how rare that is—just like in any other high potential slot—but for most players, knowing it’s possible is enough to keep things exciting. For all the reasons above, Da Vinci’s Treasure is absolutely worth a try.