Ways of Athena: Slot Overview

Software provider Thunderkick has long shown a clear fascination with myth, legend, and fantasy, releasing slots like Midas Golden Touch and the sequel Midas Golden Touch 2, its Beat the Beast series, along with Sword of Arthur. This time around, the studio has looked to Ancient Greece and emerged with Ways of Athena, a slot starring the goddess of wisdom and war, a sizeable Matching Mystery symbol mechanic, and a progressive free spins feature.

Ways of Athena opens on a true slice of arcadia in the base game. It’s easy to idealise the distant past—especially antiquity—as an age of beauty, poetry, and reason, and the warm, sunlit backdrop here certainly fits that dream. If the real world feels dominated by climate disaster, political incompetence, and a sense of looming collapse, loading up Ways of Athena as a brief getaway to a supposedly more enlightened era can feel like a welcome escape.

Ways of Athena uses a 5-reel, 3-row layout, giving plenty of room for action. In its standard left-to-right format starting from the leftmost reel, it offers 243 ways to win, though a splitting symbols feature can expand that total to as many as 43,923. There are two RTP versions available, with the top return set at 94.21%, and both versions are highly volatile. Alongside the option to enable the BET+ ante bets or use the feature buy, players can set their wager anywhere from 10 c to $/€100.

Decorated 10-A card royals serve as the low-paying symbols, paying 0.7 to 1 times their bet for a 5 OAK winning way. Above them come vases, harps, shields, helmets, and Athena as the premium symbols, returning 2 to 5 times the bet for 5-of-a-kind. Wilds can substitute for any paying symbol to help form winning ways. They can land on every reel, and a 5 OAK win made entirely of wilds awards 5 times the bet.

Ways of Athena: Slot Features

Ways of Athena includes Matching Mystery symbols, a bonus game, BET+ ante bets, and a feature buy option.

Matching Mystery Symbol

With every spin, Matching Mystery symbols can show up on reels 2 to 5. Up to 2 can land on each reel. They then randomly match the selected symbol on the leftmost reel and change into double symbols, creating 2 pay ways per symbol.

Bonus Game

Landing 3 scatter symbols awards 8 free spins, and you gain 2 extra free spins for every additional scatter, up to a maximum of 44 free spins. Matching Mystery symbols that match a scatter on the leftmost reel turn into double scatter symbols. During the bonus game, collecting Matching Mystery symbol orbs fills the meter beneath the reels. The first time it fills, it increases pay ways per Matching Mystery symbol to 3, and the second fill increases it to 5. Each fill also grants +2 free spins. Scatter symbols are not part of the bonus game.

BET+

The BET+ panel in Ways of Athena offers three selectable options. They are:

• Bonus Boost – each spin is 2 times more likely to trigger the bonus game. The cost is 1.3x the bet per spin.
• Bonus Boost Plus – each spin is 5 times more likely to trigger the bonus game. The cost is 2.2x the bet per spin.
• Flames of Athena – guarantees 1 or more Matching Mystery symbols on each spin. The cost is 5x the bet per spin.

Feature Buy

Players can skip the base game and instantly access the free spins feature by purchasing the bonus round for 100 times the bet.

Ways of Athena: Slot Verdict

Ways of Athena is, in plenty of ways—pun intended—a very typical Thunderkick release. It’s packed with mythic flavour, looks fantastic, and keeps its feature set short, straightforward, and impactful. It’s also the kind of slot that doesn’t require much mental effort to understand, letting players settle in, focus, and churn through spins. In its most basic form (with no BET+ enabled), the base game can feel a touch samey. Still, Matching Mystery symbols will eventually appear, and the ways system helps keep things moving.

Ante bets won’t suit everyone, though the Flames of Athena option noticeably changed the rhythm of Ways of Athena. From memory, the first spin with it switched on triggered a 20+ free spins bonus game. Remember, only a single Matching Mystery symbol is required to start free spins if it matches a scatter on the leftmost reel. Even so, free spin rounds can underdeliver, including sessions where a big batch of free spins is awarded. The game is good at teasing during the Matching Mystery build-up while avoiding the strongest symbol connections. If variance swings in your favour and orb collection is progressing, it’s easy to see how the slot can really start to open up. With a 25,000x win cap, Ways of Athena has the potential to open up very wide indeed.

It’s unlikely to completely redefine the myth-themed slot space, but Ways of Athena remains a dependable entry, using the mystery symbol in a less common way, adding a progressive twist to the bonus round, and presenting it all in a serene, idyllic setting.