Stairway to Heaven Slot
When you hear Stairway to Heaven, your first thought may well be the Led Zeppelin classic. But there’s always been far more to the phrase and for far longer. For centuries it’s been all about getting used to the clouds, harps and angels before you head to the pearly gates.
And Live 5 Gaming have taken this heavenly idea to the max with a game that matches the imagery with solid gameplay. There’s all kinds of bonuses, including Free Spins, Wildcards and Spinning Wheels, as well as 4 escalating levels of payout rate based on how adventurous you are.
Heavenly Delights
Usually an introduction page is all about setting the scene for the theme for the game. This is no ordinary game though. So the first thing you’ll see is the listing of lucrative bonuses on different clouds and the encouragement of how adventurous play benefits. There’s no music, which means they stand out more.
The main screen really will grab you. There are light blue skies, puffy clouds, the big pearly gates and even an angel with a halo. The golden colour stands out, especially the name of the game written in big sparkling letters. The background really does fill up all the screen, meaning that there’s plenty of space for the centrally placed 5 reels. As bright colours are used on the symbols, it all works well.
Looking for Seventh Heaven
There are 20 fixed paylines in the game, all shown up in the Paytable. The betting range really do cover a wide range. The lowest you can play for is 0.20, going up to 500 with 14 different amounts in-between. As there’s no music on the main page, it’s a pleasant surprise to hear the harp sounds when changing amount.
As there is already so much colour and brightness within the game, the buttons are nicely-low key. As well as the regular spin button, there’s an Auto Play one. On it you can choose how much you wish to bet each time, whether you wish to play for 10, 20, 50 or 100 plays, or choose a winning or losing limit. As the winning limit choice is £15,000, you are playing in the big time.
There are 10 different symbols, made up of 5 themed symbols, and an Ace, King, Queen, Jack and 10. You do need to pay close attention to the values as the lines for 5 and 4 of a kind may be identical to others, but 3 can be different. Helpfully, increasing the betting amount changes the value of the Paytable, showing a maximum value of £12,500 for 5 Seventh Heavens.
The Keys to Your Success
As shown on the left hand side of the screen, there are 9 levels. There are 4 you can choose through your betting amount, with the other 5 bonus levels. Level 1 has an 86.17% payout rate going up to 95.15 on Level 4 so it does reward the more adventurous player. This is especially true as you can only reach levels 5 and above through betting at least £2 on Level 4.There is a halo-including Wildcard which substitutes for everything except the Stairway to Heaven and Devil’s Wheel symbols.
The Stairway to Heaven is only on reel 5 and offers either a Free Spin or 5 or more Super Spins when upgrading from Level 4. The Devil’s Wheel is also only on reel 5 and offers 1 or more spins in its lucrative spinning wheel, where you can win multipliers or even an upgrade. There are 5 Spinning Wheels in total, with Level 5 offering x500. Also, keys can be superimposed on reels 1-4, so when either of the bonus cards shows up you can get an additional level upgrade.
That’s not the end of the bonuses. In Devil of a Deal (complete with red background) you choose from 16 boxes, with the 16 different possibilities ranging from £50 - £500 listed either side of the screen. You’ll be offered a Take it or Leave it option at some point. Another extra is 3 clouds appearing randomly. You get to choose one which will contain 1 of 6 very neat possibilities.
Heaven Sent
In a genre that doesn’t easily define itself, there aren’t too many games like this theme wise. One of them is 7th Heaven, which has far more basic graphics and no bonuses other than Free Spins. Heaven and Hell has significantly fewer paylines and a far darker set of images, with the hell symbols (including Death and the Devil) a lot more sinister.
But Stairway to Heaven has so much going for it. Fitting, for a game set in Heaven. It will be some time before you even think of tiring of this game. The visuals have been well designed, the rewards are fantastic and the bonuses really do reward the more dedicated players. You won’t be using the lift here.
