Divine Riches Helios: Slot Overview

Microgaming partner Just For The Win clearly has a thing for anything involving “riches”. Up to now, we’ve seen Neptune’s Riches, the studio’s first grid slot Odin’s Riches, and now the action moves skyward with Divine Riches Helios. Helios, naturally, is the Ancient Greek God of the Sun. Also called Phaethon, the shining, or Hyperion, the one above, he’s commonly shown steering a chariot across the heavens. In Divine Riches Helios, he’s portrayed as an absolute beefcake—bulging biceps and bursting pecs—fronting a game that includes jackpots and free spins with premium symbol upgrades.

Helios may rule the sun, but the slot built in his name isn’t exactly bursting with brightness. Behind the grid, clouds drift across a dark blue sky, and that’s largely the extent of it. Still, the stripped-back approach is a change from the usual pillars, temples, and Mt Olympus clichés found in Ancient Greek slots, so it does feel a bit different. The ultra-jacked Greek God adds some personality too, but beyond that, Divine Riches Helios comes across as fairly plain. One notable point is the strong link to classic WMS titles like Kronos and Zeus III, which may well be a small nod to those legendary games.

The game runs on a 5-reel, 4-row grid with 30 paylines, and one way to scoop up wins is by landing at least three matching symbols on adjacent reels. Every symbol except one pays left to right—the Helios symbol is the exception, paying in both directions. There are three RTP configurations available, with 96.05% as the best option, dropping to 94.04% or 92.16%. Volatility sits at medium across all three settings, while Divine Riches Helios allows bets from 20 p/c to $/€30 per paid spin.

At the low end of the paytable are the four card suits—diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades—returning 2.5-3 times the bet for five of a kind. Higher up are olives, pots, musical instruments, horse statues, and Helios symbols, paying 4.5 to 10 times the stake for a five-symbol line. Finally, wild symbols in Helios substitute for anything except the free spins symbols.

Divine Riches Helios: Slot Features

Just For The Win doesn’t push the boat out on new ideas in Divine Riches Helios, instead sticking to two main additions: the Blazing Bonus and Free Spins with the Hand of Helios.

Blazing Bonus

Whenever special bonus tokens appear in the game, there’s a chance to set off the Blazing Bonus feature. Here, players click items to reveal a symbol—Divine, Mega, Major, or Big. Once 3 of the same symbol type have been uncovered, the matching cash prize is awarded. The four prizes—Divine, Mega, Major, and Big—pay 5,000x, 200x, 40x, and 15x the bet, respectively.

Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols anywhere triggers 8, 12, or 16 free spins, respectively. During free spins, each time a Helios symbol lands, it is collected. After 12 Helios symbols have been collected, the Hand of Helios feature kicks in. When activated, the Hand of Helios feature upgrades a high pay symbol to the next higher-value symbol on the paytable. On top of that, every Hand of Helios activation awards +2 extra free spins. If every upgradeable symbol has already been upgraded into Helios symbols, Helios symbols stop being collected.

Divine Riches Helios: Slot Verdict

Unless you’re desperate to spin alongside one of the most shredded characters in iGaming, you’re not missing a great deal by skipping Divine Riches Helios. Just For The Win is typically strong at giving its slots a polished finish, and Divine Riches Helios does have some of that shine, but underneath it the experience feels a little thin. It’s a reasonably pleasant, understated-looking game (the cartoon hero does have some charm), yet Divine Riches Helios also arrives with a set of fairly straightforward features to match.

Maybe “straightforward” is a better fit than “plain”, but there’s not much in Divine Riches Helios that hasn’t been done just as well—if not better—somewhere else. From the jackpot picking to the Pink Elephants-style symbol-upgrading free spins. To be fair, completing the entire upgrade journey and ending up with Helios as the only premium symbol could be entertaining, though we didn’t reach that point during the review to confirm it. The pay-both-ways symbol adds a touch of uniqueness, but it wasn’t enough to distract from the weak spots—mainly gameplay that didn’t spark much imagination, plus the lingering insecurity of constantly measuring yourself against such a chiseled alpha with a heroic jawline. For a similar theme with more distinctive mechanics, Relax’s monster Helios’ Fury could be the better choice. Or, for a nostalgia hit, classics like Kronos or Zeus III may be the answer, since Divine Riches seems to draw heavily from those iconic WMS releases.

Ironically, considering the visuals, Divine Riches Helios doesn’t show quite the same blue-sky creativity that went into Neptune’s Riches or Odin’s Riches. That can be a positive or a negative, though, as some players will prefer the no-nonsense appeal of a simple pick ’n’ click jackpot bonus. The top reward of 5,000x is respectable, but it was difficult to shake the sense that Divine Riches Helios is more likely to end up taking up shelf space than becoming a must-play.