Microgaming was one of the first companies to launch real money online casinos back in the middle of the 1990s. It had many competitors at the time, but also very few games, so it had - smartly - decided to transform from a casino operator into a developer of quality casino games. This decision has kept Microgaming in business ever since.
In the two decades that have passed since the "online casino revolution", as I like to call this period, Microgaming has given us a great collection of over 500 casino games, many of them available for browser and mobile gaming.
Their latest video slot machine, the Avalon II, is the sequel of the Avalon, a five reel slot machine inspired by the legends surrounding King Arthur and his faithful Excalibur.
Avalon II is an epic quest for retrieving the Holy Grail, the goal of so many knights of the legendary Round Table. This five reel, 243 ways to win video slot machine with great graphics and even greater sounds takes us back to the legendary times of King Arthur, allowing us to meet the Black Knight, Morgan and Guinevere, the great mage Merlin and the King himself.
Players can take multiple paths in their quest to retrieve the Holy Grail, and win up to 1,200,000 coins in the process.
The journey starts at the Lake of Legends, where players need to reforge the legendary Excalibur from its fragments by rolling the dice. Later the player reaches the Misty Vale, to win a number of 15 free spins, the Whispering Woods, where the White Knight presents him with five shields to choose a bonus from, the Forest Falls for even more free spins, the Dusky Moors, where the player will have to play a matching game to win a prize.
If the player moves on with the quest, he can reach the Keep of Morgan le Fay, and be rewarded with 20 free spins, the Hall of Shadows, where he will have to defeat the Black Knight himself to reach the legendary castle of Avalon, where he can spin the Wheel of Chance for extra winnings.
The game features random appearances of Merlin, the Mage, that rewards the player with a cash prize or a multiplier, an expanding wild symbol - the Lady of the Lake. The game's scatter symbol is the Holy Grail itself, that will reward the player with a special bonus of up to 1.2 million coins when it appears on reels 2, 3 and 4. The Avalon II logo acts as a wild symbol, substituting for everything except the scatter symbols on the reels.
I have to admit I found Avalon, the predecessor of the game I am describing in this article, to be a quite boring video slot machine. The Avalon II is everything Avalon was not: a great game with incredible 3D animations, an immersive experience for every slots fan out there. Unfortunately it doesn't feature a progressive jackpot, but the 1.2 million coins make up for that.
Avalon II is available for desktop and mobile play in Microgaming powered casinos, like the Platinum Play.