Sun Temple: how it plays, odds and payouts

Sun Temple is a five-reel, three-row slot with three pay lines, a multiplying wild and two bonuses. The theme is an Egyptian temple, but the interesting part is the maths: it is a single slot whose whole return is 97%, published line by line, with a bonus that arrives about once in 107 spins. Everything is played with virtual coins that have no cash value.

How a spin works

1. Set your bet. It covers all three pay lines, which are the three rows.
2. Tap Spin. Our servers decide the whole result at that moment, including any bonus. Tapping the screen afterwards only skips the show.
3. Wins need 3, 4 or 5 matching symbols in a row from the left. Turquoise and Carnelian gems also pay for a pair.
4. The Sun Disc wild can appear on reels 2, 3 and 4 only. It replaces every symbol except the Temple Door and multiplies the line.
5. Three or more Temple Doors anywhere start a bonus.

Pay table

All pays are multiples of the total bet.

Each Sun Disc carries x2 (60% of the time), x3 (30%) or x5 (10%). Discs in the same winning line add together and multiply that line: for example a x2 and a x3 disc make that line pay five times.

The two bonuses

Three Temple Doors start a bonus in 1 spin in 107, and the game picks between two at random, half each.

Temple Link. The Temple Doors lock in place as golden scarabs. Each empty cell then has an 8% chance per respin of landing a scarab. You get 3 respins, and every new scarab resets the count to 3. The bonus ends when the respins run out or all 15 cells are full. Each scarab carries a prize drawn from this table:

A bonus holds 9.3 scarabs on average, and a full temple, which adds 102.3738x, comes up in 1.7% of bonuses. Mini, Major and Grand are the names of the in-game top prizes; they are paid in virtual coins. The chance per spin of a Mini scarab is 1 in 465, a Major 1 in 1,200 and a Grand 1 in 5,784.

Pharaoh's Offers. You are offered an amount, and you can take it or pass to see the next offer, up to 4 offers. The last offer must be taken. Each offer is the previous one times 0.3x (28%), 0.6x (24%), 1x (20%), 1.6x (18%) or 2.84x (10%), which averages exactly 1. Line wins on the same spin are paid on top.

Worked example: take or pass

Suppose Pharaoh's Offers opens with an offer of 10x your bet. If you pass, the next offer is 10x times one of five factors, so it is 3x (28%), 6x (24%), 10x (20%), 16x (18%) or 28.4x (10%). The average of those is exactly 10x: 0.28 x 3 + 0.24 x 6 + 0.2 x 10 + 0.18 x 16 + 0.1 x 28.4 = 10. Passing is a gamble with the same average as taking; it only widens the range. There is no wrong choice, and no skill that raises the return.

What the odds look like in a spin

Any win comes up 35.98% of the time, and a win bigger than your bet 10.46%. Lines supply about 48.6% of the return and the two bonuses the rest. The biggest result in the table is 12,044x, below the game-wide limit of 50,000x and 250,000,000 coins. Volatility is very high.

What matters and what does not

• Bet size: scales the coin amounts only. There is no bet level that unlocks better odds.
• Skipping the animation: changes nothing; the result is already fixed.
• "Due" bonuses: a long stretch without a bonus does not make one more likely. Each spin is separate; see how slot machines work.
• Take or pass: equal on average, as shown above.

The full set of figures is on the odds page, including the Sun Temple section.

Play with limits

Coins are virtual, have no cash value and cannot be withdrawn or exchanged for prizes. For adults (18+), for entertainment. Slots can run for a long time without a break, so set a time limit before you start; see playing safely in Cashout Arcade. To compare this slot's return and spread with other games, read volatility explained.