Romanov Riches Introduction

Just when it seemed these awkward Microgaming collaborations couldn’t possibly sink any lower, along comes another one. The once-dominant Microgaming—behind standout classics like Immortal Romance and Jurassic Park—keeps letting small, little-known studios create “exclusive” titles for them. So far the outcomes have been so poor that it almost feels like a kind of goodwill initiative: sharing their resources and know-how with developers who appear to have no real grasp of online slots. If that’s the case, fair enough—but the games are still bad. There’s no escaping that.

Romanov Riches is a Microgaming powered slot made by a studio called Fortune Factor. They’re so obscure that, at the time of writing, even Microgaming lists no information about them among its associated studios.

This 5-reel, 3-row slot takes wagers from €0.20 to €100 and features 15 fixed pay lines. Sadly, as is often the case with Microgaming, there’s no available information at all about the theoretical return to player. That’s typically a warning sign and, as a result, it will cost points in our final verdict.

While not especially flashy, the presentation does a solid job of echoing the classic Microgaming style that generally holds up. Visually and sonically, it definitely carries a The Finer Reels of Life kind of feel.

Romanov Riches Symbols

Romanov Riches features 9 regular symbols, including the 10, J, Q, K and A low-value icons along with 4 Romanov Gems —with the green and blue sharing the top spot, paying 4 times the stake for 5 of a kind. The Snowflake Wild is the real money-maker, though, and it appears stacked on the reels just like the other symbols. That means a full-screen wild result is possible, awarding a total of 750 times the stake.

Romanov Riches Re-spin Feature & Bonus

If you hit matching full symbol stacks on 2 to 4 neighbouring reels, beginning from the leftmost reel, the re-spin feature activates. In this mode, the stacked reels stay locked while the remaining reels re-spin. If another matching full stack lands, it triggers an additional re-spin. In our testing, it didn’t feel particularly difficult to land a full screen, and we even managed a couple of max wins in the base game thanks to the premium symbols. Unfortunately, the rewards are dreadful and won’t deliver more than 80 times the stake outside of the bonus.

Every reel also contains a stack of mystery symbols. One symbol replaces the mystery stack on each reel, and the stack then highlights in the same colour as the symbol it turns into. These mystery symbols boost the likelihood of forming winning combinations made up of fully stacked symbols and can even turn into bonus symbols.

The bonus game is presented as a cash wheel. Landing 3, 4, or 5 stacks of the bonus symbol triggers 1, 2, or 3 bonus wheels respectively. The first two wheels award a cash prize of up to 75 times the stake, and if you manage to trigger the third wheel, it adds a multiplier to the total cash prize collected from the two first wheels.

Romanov Riches Conclusion

Romanov Riches, unfortunately, is short on creativity, drive, and—most importantly—solid win potential. The base game payouts are painfully low, and the bonus round doesn’t really compensate, even with the 1000x max win potential. There will probably always be a place for old-school, retro-style slots in the constantly evolving iGaming world, but what never changes is players’ pull toward games that can deliver truly massive wins—something Microgaming seems to have misjudged here.