Lara Croft Temples and Tombs: Review

Armed with a hefty budget, Microgaming made a big show at the London iGaming conference, trying to inject some energy into its fading outlook by heavily promoting its upcoming releases—most of which, to us at least, seemed about as thrilling as a grey London downpour. Still, one reveal did genuinely stand out: the flagship game and third entry in the Lara Croft series, Temples and Tombs.

The development work was handed to one of Microgaming’s most dedicated partners, Triple Edge Studios, who also created the follow-up to the well-known Playboy slot (which, it’s fair to say, flopped). At its core, Lara Croft Temples and Tombs follows a classic Microgaming blueprint with 5-reels, 3-rows and 243 ways to win—a format the studio has relied on successfully for years. Available on all compatible devices with stakes from 0.20 to 20€ per spin, it includes a Rolling Reels mechanic where cascading wins can lift the multiplier up to 5x in the base game and enhance payouts with a 15x multiplier during the Free Spins feature.

After stepping out of a chilly, cramped stone cavern and into a vast Mayan temple sparkling with gold and jade, Temples and Tombs presents a striking setting that begs to be explored. The action takes place inside the temple, with symbols displayed on stone blocks. Across the reels you’ll spot torches, grapnels, backpacks and water bottles. Higher-paying icons include two stone statues and Lara herself, shown in different action scenes—on a motorcycle, mid-jump, holding a gun and as a portrait. The portrait is the top earner, paying 50 times your stake for 5 on a full payline. The wild is a scarab beetle coin and it substitutes for every symbol except the scatter.

Lara Croft Temples and Tombs: Features

In the base game, you’ll make use of the Rolling Reels feature, which is essentially lifted straight from Microgaming’s 2016 title Jungle Jim: Eld Dorado. If you’ve played that one, you already know how it works—symbols that form a win shatter and are replaced by new ones dropping in from above. It’s a well-liked mechanic that can stretch gameplay by enabling multiple wins from a single spin, and here it pushes the multiplier to 2x, 3x and 5x. Any non-winning spin resets the multiplier to its initial value.

Hitting 3 or more scatter symbols activates the Free Spins feature, awarding between 8 and 32 free spins. Beginning at a 3x multiplier, just as in Jungle Jim, each consecutive win increases it to 6x, 9x and 15x. As before, a losing spin drops the multiplier back to the 3x starting level. The feature can also be retriggered, adding 8 extra spins whenever 3 scatters land on the screen. Altogether, up to 80 free spins are available, with over 7000 times your stake potentially on the table during the bonus.

On top of that, the game also includes a Jackpot feature. While you play, wilds are collected to improve your odds of landing a jackpot. Triggered at random, the Minor, Major and Grand jackpots pay 15, 100 and 5000 times your stake respectively.

Lara Croft Temples and Tombs: Verdict

With Temples and Tombs, Microgaming opted for a safer approach, pairing Triple Edge Studios’ strong visual craftsmanship with one of Microgaming’s long-established math models. Even though the gameplay clearly shares similarities, Temples and Tombs isn’t simply a clone of Jungle Jim. Thanks to the added jackpot feature, a fresh symbol lineup and a few other differences, Temple and Tombs manages to feel like its own game.

All in all, there’s plenty of reason to dive into the impressive world Triple Edge Studios has built here—arguably their strongest release so far. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but it’s exactly the kind of 243+ ways gameplay with solid upside that Microgaming and its partners should be leaning into more often.