Towering Pays Excalibur: Slot Overview

Developer GamesLab brings its Towering Pays mechanic back into the spotlight with a slot inspired by the enduring King Arthur legend. Backed by Yggdrasil Gaming, it’s called Towering Pays Excalibur and it delivers largely the same style of play as the earlier title we covered, Towering Pays Valhalla, along with comparable strengths and weaknesses. This time around, the studio has tweaked a few elements within a feature set that’s extensive, to say the least. If you’re up for yanking swords from stones in old England, read on.

Visually, the first noticeable difference is that the artwork feels more grounded than Valhalla’s slightly otherworldly vibe. It’s even a touch chilly, with a square, grey stone castle and a bridge over a river or moat sitting behind the animated reels. The game begins on a 5-reel, 3-row grid, which can expand up to 8 rows tall thanks to the Towering Pays mechanic. As the rows climb, the number of paylines increases alongside them. At the starting 3-row setup there are 15 paylines, and this grows to 65 paylines once the grid reaches maximum height. All in all, Excalibur looks fine without being particularly memorable—pleasant enough, but not the sort of slot that lingers in your mind.

Playable across devices, Towering Pays Excalibur is a medium-high volatile slot loaded with features. You can play it in two formats: regular mode with stakes from 25 p/c to $/€25 per spin, or by enabling the Quest Bet, which lifts the betting range to 40 p/c to $/€40. With Quest Bet turned on, there’s also a chance to trigger an extra Hold & Spin feature, which cannot occur when Quest Bet is disabled.

Wins land when you hit at least three matching symbols across the paylines from the left side of the reels, and there are ten standard paying symbols in total. The first four are low-value card suits paying 0.6x to 0.8x the bet for five of a kind, followed by wolves, horses, and four character-based premium symbols. These non-card symbols pay 1x to 6x the bet for a five-symbol combination. The King Arthur wild substitutes for any paying symbol, can land on any reel, and five wilds on a payline return 10x the bet.

Towering Pays Excalibur: Slot Features

There’s a hefty list of mechanics to unpack, even if several are variations on a shared idea. In this slot you’ll come across Excalibur Magic, Stage Play, Prize Multipliers, a Feature Wheel, Win Spins, the Avalon feature, four Free Spin rounds, and a Hold & Spin bonus.

Excalibur Magic

The Excalibur symbol can show up on reels 1, 2, or 3 during base play or within the Lancelot and Merlin features. It may appear on reels 1, 2, 3, or 4 in the Arthur and Camelot features, or across all reels when playing the Camelot feature on its 5×8 sized game grid. When Excalibur lands, it transforms into a randomly chosen matching symbol and can cover part or all of the reel.

Stage Play

Any time Excalibur appears in at least one position on every reel where it’s able to land, the game advances to the next stage. This adds an extra row and also grants +10 paylines. Stage Play keeps progressing in this way until the grid reaches 8 rows high, and it resets once the Avalon feature finishes.

Prize Multiplier

On random winning spins, a prize multiplier can be applied. The taller the active grid, the bigger the potential multiplier, ranging from x2 up to x10.

Feature Wheel

The Feature Wheel triggers when 3 Feature Wheel symbols are visible on reels 1, 3, and 5. When it activates, you can be awarded Hold & Spin, Win Spins, one of the free spins rounds, or Wheel Upgrades, which improves your chances of landing a stronger feature if the wheel spins again.

Lancelot or Merlin Free Spins are free spin modes where prize multipliers can appear on any win. In Arthur Free Spins, Excalibur can also land on reel 4, while in Camelot Free Spins, Excalibur may also appear on reel 4 or 5 when the grid is 8 rows high. Each of these bonuses starts on the 5×3 layout and awards 6 free spins. If Excalibur lands in at least one position on each of its active reels, you receive +1 extra free spin.

Win Spins

During every Win Spin, Excalibur covers reels 1, 2, and 3 on the current grid while reels 4 and 5 spin. The grid size stays the same, and each spin guarantees a win.

Avalon Feature

This activates when Excalibur lands in at least one position on reels 1, 2 and 4 while playing on the 5×8 grid in normal game mode. The multi-tier Wheel then spins to award either wheel upgrades, one of the free spin bonuses, Win Spins, or the Hold & Spin if Quest Bet is active.

Hold & Spin

With the Quest Bet option enabled, Excalibur can sometimes reveal shield symbols. If at least 6 shields land, the Hold & Spin feature is triggered. When more than 6 shields are visible, each extra shield adds a row, up to 8. Once the bonus begins, you get 3 respins, and all triggering shields stay held in position. Only shields can land during this feature, and whenever they do, the respin counter resets. When the round ends, the prize values shown on the locked shields are paid out. If any shield shows a Feature Wheel, that reward is granted after Hold & Spin concludes. If you manage to fill every position with shields, you earn an extra 1,000x the bet on top of all other wins.

Bonus Buy

Finally, there’s a buy feature offering 2 options. For 50x the bet you spin to win Wheel Upgrades, Win Spins, or Lancelot Spins, while for 80x the bet you can win any of those or Merlin Spins.

Towering Pays Excalibur: Slot Verdict

Gameslab has taken the already intricate approach of Valhalla Towering Pays and doubled down, creating a game that feels even more tangled. Features trigger in multiple places, feed into other mechanics, set off additional events, expand the grid, and keep the chain moving. If you like restless, constantly shifting gameplay, it could be worth trying; if not, it can come across as packed with repetition.

A key drawback is the sheer number of branded features that, in practice, behave very similarly. A quick glance through the paytable can make Towering Pays Excalibur look like a non-stop bonus celebration. But once you dig into the specifics, many of the mechanics overlap, and it arguably would have landed better with one or two standout additions instead of lots of middling ones. That said, some players may enjoy the sense of stepping up through the bonuses once they’ve learned how everything connects.

Another issue is that as the grid expands, the paylines don’t always feel like they scale effectively. There’s plenty of stacked-symbol activity, yet you can still end up in odd scenarios where the 5×8 grid is full of matching icons but produces only a single winning line. Perhaps Excalibur would have benefited from trimming back some of the excess into a cleaner, more focused design—though doing so might also undermine its core aim, which seems to be delivering a feature-heavy experience on a dynamic reel set.

Over time, Towering Pays Excalibur throws so many mechanics into the mix that they can start to blend together, making it hard to track what has already happened and what hasn’t. In the end, it feels less like a clear evolution of the previous game and more like an extra layer of complexity with an Arthurian theme.