Thunderkick’s second entry in their Beat the Beast series focuses on the ancient Egyptian monster, the Sphinx.
Like its predecessor Kraken’s Lair, Mighty Sphinx is a high-volatility slot with a decent set of bonus features and a respectable payday up for grabs.
The Beat the Beast series is one of the latest sets of slot games from Thunderkick, who has released several slot series in recent years. Unlike other vendors who release tons of one-off slots, Thunderkick appears to be trying to build game franchises with their slots.
Despite being a sequel, Mighty Sphinx keeps a lot of aspects from Kraken’s Lair. In fact, if you have played Kraken’s Lair, you will find a lot of similarities in how each game looks. Aside from a few cosmetic differences in the background and color theme, the 5x3 reel set-up is exactly the same.
While we wish that Mighty Sphinx would build upon the success of its predecessor, we cannot help but feel that this is a bit of a re-tread.
Like Kraken’s Lair, the action here is determined by 9 fixed paylines. The object of the game is to hit three matching icons from left to right.
Thunderkick has stated before that their goal with the Beat the Beast series is to show off classic slot mechanics with a modern graphical overhaul. While Mighty Sphinx certainly does have a lot of cool aspects about it, we feel that Thunderkick could have kicked up the action a notch to fit more into its monster hunting theme.
The action here is decidedly old school. Thunderkick continues its hot streak of utilizing simple but effective art styles in their reel symbols. The graphics here are charmingly polished, but with how heavily Thunderkick has relied on this style in the past, it can be a bit bland to look at after a while.
Low-paying symbols are comprised of Broadway cards (from 10 to A), with medium-paying symbols of a scarab, a sword, an Ankh, and a small Sphinx figurine. The major symbol to watch out for is the full Sphinx statue, which heralds a payday of 250x your bet.
While this is a decent payout, we cannot help but compare it to Kraken’s Lair’s payout for its high-paying symbol, which is 500x your initial bet. We do not know why Thunderkick decided to go with lower payouts for Mighty Sphinx’s own high-paying symbol, as 500x is already not an exorbitant figure to begin with.
One way that Mighty Sphinx tries to make for this is its slightly higher RTP rate of 96.14%, which is marginally higher than Kraken’s Lair’s RTP.
Being more of a classic slot, Mighty Sphinx does not offer a lot for players who love complex slot experiences.
The base game contains a Mystery Feature, which, as you might have guessed, is mysterious. The feature triggers randomly, and can show up on any spin. Once it hits, up to three wild or scatter symbols (Sphinx emblem) are inserted into random reels. The Sphinx emblem also has the ability to pay out on its own, up to 200x your bet for five of a kind.
The best feature in this game for us is the free spins. Get 10 free spins by lining up three Sphinx emblems with one spin. Hit even more Sphinx emblems with free spins to get even more free spins, at a rate of five extra spins every time you see three Sphinx emblems.
Retriggering the free spins also allows the Wild Upgrade feature to kick in, which turns one medium-paying symbol in the reels into a wild symbol, opening up even more ways to score a major payday here.
Again, we have to compare Mighty Sphinx to Kraken’s Lair in this department. Kraken’s Lair offers up pretty much the same bonus roster, but with better payouts at the end of the day—unless you are a dedicated Egyptology fan, Kraken’s Lair might be a better choice if you’re in the market for a Thunderkick slot.
Naturally, Mighty Sphinx offers a standard auto play feature that contains all the basic options for a hands-free slot gaming experience. You can tweak your setting here for your bet sizes, number of spins, and so on.
Simply choose the settings you want, then sit back and relax as you surrender your fate to Lady Luck.
Theoretically, the biggest possible win you can pull down at this game is 4,444x your initial stake. While this number might be large at first glance, it is a significant drop down from what its predecessor Kraken’s Lair offers.
Although Mighty Sphinx offers a high-volatility experience, the payouts here might be a tad too low for fans of this high-variance slot type.
Thunderkick is a smaller casino game developer. Probably one of our favorite developers operating today, Thunderkick is renowned for their clean and simple slots, and distinctive art style. The vendor takes a lot of chances with their slots’ visuals, constantly toying with standard reel set-ups to provide players a unique experience.
While we feel they missed the mark a bit with this game, we still look forward to playing more of their games.
Thunderkick’s second entry into their Beat the Beast series is a bit of a let-down. As we were big fans of the first entry, Kraken’s Lair, we expected Mighty Sphinx to build upon the best aspects of its predecessor and move the series forward. Unfortunately, Mighty Sphinx seems to be a minor step back for Thunderkick. Mighty Sphinx offers fewer bonus features with smaller payouts for essentially the same investment.
While Mighty Sphinx serves up a good time once you try it, it just does not stand out in a sea of competitors. If you are looking for ancient Egypt-themed slots, we would personally go with something else. For better monster-themed slots, other entries in the Beat the Beast series would be a better choice.
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