Rich Wilde and the Shield of Athena

Rich Wilde and the Shield of Athena is a Play’n GO slot released on May 28, 2020, taking the explorer to Greek myth for a 5×3, 10-payline hunt. The stated theoretical RTP is 96.25%, volatility is high, and the win cap reaches 10,000x the bet, a sharp step up from the fixed-line entries that preceded it in the Rich Wilde series.

The paytable sits on familiar Play’n GO ground: card royals at the bottom, Greek artifacts in the middle, and a Rich Wilde wild paying 1,000x the bet for five on a line. The Shield of Athena symbol itself pays 500x as a regular symbol and doubles to 1,000x when it lands as a wild, making it the highest-value single symbol on the reels either way it appears.

Medusa’s Gaze Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 Cat Wilde scatter symbols awards 10, 12, or 15 free spins respectively, with further scatter hits during the round retriggering indefinitely. The feature carries the same Greek mythology theming as the base game, with wins building on the Medusa Respin mechanic described below rather than a separate multiplier system.

The Medusa Respin

Whenever a Shield of Athena wild lands, in the base game or during free spins, it triggers a Medusa Respin: the Shield and any winning symbols from that spin lock in place while the rest of the reels spin again, and any further Shields or wins that land extend the respin sequence. During these respins, both the Rich Wilde wild and the Cat Wilde scatter convert into additional Wild Shields, compounding the lock-and-respin effect rather than resetting it.

Shield of Athena Review

Shield of Athena marks the series’ return to fixed paylines after the cluster-based Tome of Madness, but it does not simply repeat Book of Dead’s formula. The Medusa Respin turns a single well-placed wild into a chain of locked positions rather than a one-off payout, which gives even the base game genuine escalation potential without needing the bonus round to fire. Combined with the 10,000x cap, that makes this one of the higher-ceiling payline entries in the franchise.

It sits as a bridge point in the series’ history: still built on 10 fixed lines like the earliest games, but carrying a respin mechanic that would not have been out of place in the cluster-based titles surrounding it. The Greek setting also gives Play’n GO a chance to lean into a mythology with its own established iconography, statues, temple columns, and Medusa’s serpentine hair rendered in the same painterly style the studio uses across the franchise, and the sound design ties every locked wild to a distinct stone-grinding cue that makes a building respin chain easy to follow by ear alone, even before the reels finish settling. That attention to feedback matters in a respin-driven game, where knowing exactly how many positions are locked shapes the decision to keep watching a chain play out rather than losing track of how close a round is to paying out its full potential.