Play Cleopatra Plus for Free in Demo Mode by IGT

Cleopatra Plus review

Theme and Storyline

Cleopatra Plus is one of a myriad of follow ons from classic brick and mortar slot machine Cleopatra. After it got a digital revamp the Cleopatra line has gone through a slew of versions culminating in Cleopatra Plus.

Cleopatra – the seductive beauty who seduced Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and the imagination of artists ranging from Shakespeare to the coders at IGT – has a new gimmick this time around. She’s got levelling system based on the number of topless gentleman followers she accumulates on your playthrough.

Jump in and be enchanted by the world of Classical Egypt.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

Like many an IGT offerings Cleopatra Plus is a high-quality production. They clearly sank some money into the artwork and symbol design. The usual Kings, Queens, Knaves and Tens are given the King Tut treatment in gold and pearls.

The soundtrack also shows real production values, the kind of vaguely exotic middle eastern riff you’d expect from a game set in Egypt, with additional recordings of "Cleopatra" added for some sex appeal.

The animations are varied and smooth. There is very little wrong with the game from a visual standpoint.

Cleopatra Review

Theme and Story Line

"The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them" - From Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

Cleopatra, the seductress of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and the Roman imagination is the ostensible theme of this slot machine. With Egyptian designs and a pseudo near east soundtrack.

While Classical Egypt is a fun theme, to which slot machines go back again and again, the theme is really nominal more than anything else. There is not much of a story going on as you play.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

The graphics are nice. The designs are bright but not garish and evoke a kind of cartoon idea of Egypt and the opulence of Cleopatra’s rule. They are also easy to read, taking some of the strain out of working out how you won during payouts.

There’s an electronic soundtrack that draws a little on sitars and drums to add to the atmosphere of the game.

Like most IGT slots the animation is functional and smooth, but nothing special. It doesn’t blow you away, but it is solid enough that it doesn’t detract from the game.

Cleopatra slot Gameplay

Gameplay is where Cleopatra rather disappoints.

It is a pretty standard five-reel slot with up to twenty winlines. You can select fewer if you want to up you volatility somewhat (the choice is between 1, 5, 9, 15 or 20 lines). Beyond that there is little to change up the play.

The bonus round when you hit it is a little too simple (just free spins and a multiplier).

If all you want from your slot is money-in, money-out then there are more streamlined games. If you want more fun from your slots, the gameplay lets you down on that score too.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins in Cleopatra slot

There is a Wild symbol (the Cleopatra Logo) which will help you fill out a winline for any symbol except the scatter.

There is a nice rule where if you hit a payout with a Wild symbol then the payout doubles.

Should you hit two or more Scatter Symbols they will pay a multiple of your total bet (as opposed to the bet per line). But if you hit three or more Scatter symbols, the real payout will be on the 15 free spins you take down.

During the Bonus rounds there all the payouts are tripled (apart from the payout for 5 wilds). Free spins can be retriggered up to 180 total free spins, but on the whole you can expect to play your 15 and cash out.

Cleopatra slot Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

Cleopatra is a low to medium volatility slot, so although it is a popular classic of the genre, we tend to avoid slots that are not high-volatility (for more on why see our strategy section).

The RTP is a little disappointing as well at 95.02% which is a little below the industries average of about 96%.

The site we tested allowed a range of bets from $/£/€0.20 to $/£/€200 per spin depending on how many lines and the cash value set to the coins. Which is a reasonable spread.

Conclusion

Cleopatra is a popular slot that is not going anywhere. Many players will enjoy a few spins for old times’ sake, but on the whole she is showing her age.

The design is solid but uninspired and the real letdown is the oversimple gameplay.

When added to the poor RTP and low variance this slot looks like it should be unattractive, but must be doing something right, because people keep coming back to play Cleopatra.

Gameplay

The basic gameplay is that of a standard five reel, forty payline slot. However there are a few interesting wrinkles when it comes to the bonuses.

There is a levelling system based on winning over "followers", with higher levels improving your RTP by unlocking more and better bonus options (each one identified with and area of the "bonus map") which are looked at in more detail below.

The gameplay is solid, and works well. However, given the rarity of hitting bonuses, it does become highly repetitive.

The only interesting choice is which lucky deity you chose. These symbols are spread out at first, but as you reach higher levels they stack for bigger wins when they do hit.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The specialised symbols in Cleopatra Plus include a wild Cleopatra Plus symbol which also multiplies your win by two if you win using it as a wild. It’s also the highest paying symbol if you manage a straightforward win with the symbol by lining a number of them up in a row.

Another nice feature is that the wild symbol often comes in stacks of 2 to 10 symbols.

The other special symbol is the Follower symbol. Every time one of these falls on any reel you get the number of followers on that symbol added to your running total. As you increase your number of followers your options for bonus get more and better.

The Follower symbol also serves to trigger the bonus if you manage to hit three of them on any three reels. The bonus game consists of placing the number of followers you trigger the bonus with on various sites on a "Bonus Map". These sites award you free spins, payouts and multipliers for the bonus spins round which follows.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The RTP starts out as a dismal 92.89% and can only be improved by rising up through the levels. The highest RTP you can achieve is 96.50%. This is only reached if you manage to collect more than 1250 followers (which gets you to level 8) on one play-through.

If you stick with this poor payout to get the game up to the rather average 96.50% the game becomes a little more appealing thanks to its high-volatility. But getting that far is gonna be costly and a bit of a grind.

While you cannot vary the number of winlines, the number of coins you can bet per line ranges from 1 to 50. At the website we tested the coin values offered mean you could bet anywhere from $/£/€0.40 up to $/£/€2,000 per spin. Which more or less covers all bankroll sizes.

Conclusion

Cleopatra Plus is a fun, well designed game that is highly attractive in almost every way.

Unfortunately the RTP of 92.89% is unacceptably low. And it requires you sinking too much time and money into the game to level up before that RTP becomes even close to playable.

A shame since in almost every other way it is a great slot.