Orient Express review
Orient Express came out from Yggdrasil Gaming on 30 November 2017 and offers a structure unusual for a line slot: the game runs as a journey rather than a single bonus. The route consists of four cities, and each has its own feature. You can move on only through free spins. The paytable, feature weights, line patterns and denominations come from the configuration of the studio’s official demo server rather than from published rules, so reading them is in places tentative.
A compartment with a view of Paris
The official banner shows a compartment of an old railway carriage with red quilted seats, red curtains on the windows, a lamp with a shade and art deco wood trim. The central window shows a lilac Eiffel Tower and rooftops, and golden lettering of the title sits over the window. The whole design stresses that the game starts in Paris, not Istanbul, and the road is still ahead.
The studio’s description adds luxury: put on your finest garments and join the high society of gaming. The tone is deliberately genteel, without aggressive dynamics, and it matches the rhythm of the slot: features arrive one at a time, not in an avalanche.
A 20-coin stake and the Orient Express denominations
There are five reels, three rows and twenty lines. By the demo server’s data, the stake is 20 coins, meaning 20 lines at one coin each. The coin size is chosen from a list of denominations from 0.01 to 5.0 in euros, so the total stake ranges from 0.20 to 100. The scheme is typical of the studio’s line slots: the stake is not split by the number of lines but fixed at 20 coins, and its size is the player’s one control.
How the twenty lines are spread over the grid
The demo server’s configuration stores all twenty lines: three straight ones, zigzags, chevrons and their inverted forms. Count how many lines pass through each cell and the picture is uneven: of the hundred passes of lines (twenty lines across five reels), 39 fall on the middle row and 29 and 32 on the outer ones. A symbol in the middle of the second or fourth reel takes part in nine lines of twenty, while a corner symbol takes part in six or seven. A Wild that stops in the centre works on more lines than one in a corner, which is why substitution features are worth more in the middle of the grid.
Paris, Venice, Belgrade, Istanbul
The route is told in the studio’s description. The player starts in Paris, then rides through Venice and Belgrade and reaches Istanbul. Each city has its own feature: Walking Wilds, Win Multipliers, Wild Reels and Random Wilds. The studio lists them in exactly that order but does not state which city carries which feature.
Travel between cities happens through free spins. So to see all four features you must win the bonus at least three times: Paris to Venice, Venice to Belgrade, Belgrade to Istanbul. Once every city is open, the player picks a favourite place and feature after each free-spin round.
Walking Wild: where it starts
The Walking Wild moves from reel to reel. The direction and the number of steps are not given in the description, but the demo server’s configuration has weights for the starting reel: 1, 3, 5, 4 and 3 for reels one to five in the base game, and 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 in free spins. In the base game the Wild most often starts on the third reel (31.3%), and in the bonus the centre of weight shifts right: almost a third falls on the fifth reel (31.6%). The reading is tentative: the studio does not explain how the weights relate to the movement, and the numbers are best taken as a sign that the bonus pushes the Wild away from the left edge.
Win Multiplier: four levels and different weights
The multiplier feature in the configuration has four levels with weights of 6, 4, 2 and 1 in the base game. So the lowest level appears in 46.2% of cases, the next in 30.8%, the third in 15.4% and the top level in 7.7%. In free spins all four levels are equally likely, 25% each.
The multiplier values themselves are not stated in the configuration, and the studio does not give them in its description either. So no average multiplier can be worked out, only one thing noted: in the bonus the high levels come 3.3 times more often than in the base game, comparing 25% with 7.7%.
Wild Reel: one, two or three Wild reels
The Wild Reel turns a whole reel into a Wild. The configuration has weights for the number of such reels, 90, 9 and 1 in the base game and 34, 7 and 1 in free spins, which read as one, two and three Wild reels. As shares that is 90%, 9% and 1% against 81%, 16.7% and 2.4%: three Wild reels turn up 2.4 times more often in the bonus than in the base game, and two Wild reels 1.9 times. Since a reel of three Wilds crosses all twenty lines, every extra Wild reel changes the picture markedly, and the bonus is built so that such events are closer.
Random Wilds: up to eleven counts
The Random Wilds configuration holds eleven quantity values with weights that fall quickly: from 2,125 to 1 in the base game and from 4,000 to 1 in free spins. Nearly half of the triggers give the smallest quantity of Wilds (49.1% in the base game, 55.8% in free spins), and the four lowest options together make up 95.3% and 96.5%. Big sets of Random Wilds are very rare: the last three options, with weights of 5, 2 and 1, add up to 8 in 4,327, roughly one trigger in 540.
Free spins of 7, 15 or 30 and the choice of feature after Istanbul
The configuration records three free-spin numbers: 7, 15 and 30. It is reasonable to read them as the reward for three, four and five Freespin symbols, but the game page never states that link. What separates free spins from the base game is the feature weights: the bonus does not simply continue the game, it retunes the odds in favour of stronger features.
After Istanbul the player decides where to go and which feature to take for the next bonus, and this choice is the one strategic point of the game. The pairing of cities and features is not named, but the weights suggest criteria. The Wild Reel gives two or three Wild reels in 19% of bonus cases against 10% in the base game. Random Wilds delivers something other than the smallest quantity in about 44% of bonus cases. The Win Multiplier gives each of its four levels with the same chance, so the top level is more frequent than in the base game. The Walking Wild starts further to the right. Without the multiplier values and the Walking Wild’s step count there is no strict answer to “which is best”.
Symbols and payouts as shares of the stake
| Symbol | 3 in a row | 4 in a row | 5 in a row |
|---|---|---|---|
| High1 | 1.75 | 5 | 50 |
| High2 | 1.5 | 4.5 | 45 |
| High3 | 1.25 | 4 | 40 |
| High4 | 1 | 3.75 | 37.5 |
| Low1 | 0.35 | 1.25 | 5 |
| Low2 | 0.35 | 1.25 | 5 |
| Low3 | 0.25 | 1 | 3.75 |
| Low4 | 0.25 | 1 | 3.75 |
The figures show the payout per line in multiples of the total stake. The biggest line without a Wild, five High1 symbols, pays 50 bets, while three of even the most valuable symbol give only 1.75. From three to four High1 symbols the payout grows 2.9 times and from four to five tenfold; for Low1 and Low2 the step from four to five is fourfold, and for Low1 the step from three to four is 3.6 times. So most of a line’s value comes from the length of the combination, not from the symbol or the number of winning lines: five Low1 pay the same as four High1 (5 bets).
The €115,000 cap among Yggdrasil slots
The studio gives the maximum win in euros, €115,000. At the top stake of 100 this equals about 1,150x, or 23 times the biggest line without features; the real cap at different operators may differ. To reach it you need Wild reels, multipliers and the bonus, not one lucky line. Among Yggdrasil’s line slots such a cap looks modest.
| Slot | Year | RTP | Max win |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orient Express | 2017 | 96.2% | about 1,150x |
| Valley of the Gods | 2017 | 96.2% | 5,800x |
| Vikings Go Berzerk | 2016 | 96.1% | 4,000x |
| Wolf Hunters | 2018 | 96.3% | 2,324x |
Closest by year and RTP is Valley of the Gods: the same 96.2% RTP but a cap five times higher. The cap is also higher in Vikings Go Berzerk and Wolf Hunters.
“Medium – High”: how to read the studio’s range
No single level is picked: the studio writes “Medium – High”, meaning medium or high volatility, and the label itself says the game sits between two categories. Neither hit frequency nor bonus frequency is published by the studio, so any estimate stays qualitative. The paytable and the feature weights point to a game of moderate risk: the cap is not high and line payouts are modest.
