Slots Like Artifacts: Three Reel Multipliers and a 20,000x Tavern Duel
Artifacts is Peter & Sons dropping you into a crowded fantasy tavern where a king, a wizard and a skeleton with a lute are all leaning over the same board game. It runs on a five-reel, three-row grid paying 243 ways in both the base game and the bonus, at a default RTP of 96.26% with very high volatility and stakes from £0.20 to £50. Wins cascade, and above the middle three reels sit three shields carrying multipliers that build as those cascades feed them. Below the reels, three wooden crates act as a fourth reel of power-ups that can add to one multiplier, add to all of them, double one or double the lot. In the base game the shields wipe at the end of every spin. In free spins they do not, which is the whole game in one sentence and the reason the ceiling sits at 20,000x stake. Anyone hunting for slots like Artifacts is usually after that exact shape: cascades feeding a multiplier, a bonus that stops the reset, and a maximum big enough to justify the wait.
Where to Play
18+ only. T&Cs apply. Please gamble responsibly.
How the Game Works
Reviewed by Paul StonePublished: July 2026
SlotsLike.co.uk carries affiliate links and may earn a commission when you sign up through one. It has no bearing on what we write about a game. Gambling is for over-18s, so decide what a session is worth before you start it and walk away at that number.
There are no paylines to learn here. Matching symbols pay whenever they land on adjacent reels starting from the left, which gives 243 combinations across the five reels, and every win clears itself away so new symbols can drop into the gaps. That cascade is not just decoration. Each time a winning combination touches one of the middle three reels, that reel’s shield climbs, and the shields are what turn a modest cluster of matching runes into something worth stopping for.
The bet range is the usual Peter & Sons spread of 20p up to £50, though individual casinos set their own caps and plenty stop well short of the top end. Hit frequency is reported at 23.49%, so slightly better than one paying spin in four, and that number is doing a lot of work in setting expectations. Most of those hits are a single small combination that nudges one shield from x1 to x2 and then evaporates when the spin ends. The game is honest about this: watch a base session for ten minutes and you will see the shields reach x3 or x4 several times and never once carry anything into the next spin.
What Artifacts does well is make the wait legible. You can see exactly how close a spin came, because the shields sit in plain view and the crates under the reels open and shut in front of you. Compare that with a slot where the maths happens invisibly and you get why this design has landed better with regular players than with anyone dipping in for a few spins. It is also why the game feels slower than it is. Nothing is hidden, so nothing is glossed over either.
Symbols and Paytable
The reels split into two clear tiers. The low end is a set of pale stone tablets carved with simple glyphs: an upward arrow, a star, a heart, a four-pointed diamond and a T-shaped mark ringed with dots. Above them sit the artefacts the game is named after, and they are objects rather than cards: a purple potion in a corked vial, a golden sceptre tipped with a green gem, a spiky red crystal that looks like a lump of coral, and a dark many-sided die. Those four are what you are waiting on, and a full run of any of them across five reels is where the shields earn their keep.
The paytable itself is worth opening before your first spin rather than taking a review’s word for it, including this one. Peter & Sons ships more than one RTP configuration on several of its games and lets operators choose, and the pay values move with the configuration. The 96.26% quoted everywhere is the default build, not a promise about the version in front of you.
Bonus Features Explained
The Three Reel Multipliers
The shields above reels two, three and four are the spine of the game. Every one starts a spin at x1. When a win covers one of those reels, its shield goes up, and if a single win spans more than one of them the values are added together rather than multiplied, so x4, x6 and x3 across the three becomes x13 on that payout. Reels one and five never carry a shield, which quietly means the biggest wins here always involve the middle of the grid. In the base game the whole set resets when the spin finishes, however far it climbed.
Feature Boxes
Three wooden crates sit under the middle reels and spin along with them, functioning as an extra reel that only ever lands power-ups or nothing. There are four kinds. A regular adding box puts up to ten points onto the shield above it. A special adding box does the same to all three at once. A regular multiplier box doubles one shield. A special multiplier box doubles all three. On a good spin a special adding box followed by a special multiplier turns three sleepy x2 shields into something absurd, which is precisely the moment the game is built around. On most spins the crates open and nothing comes out.
Golden Symbols
Some symbols land with a gold outline instead of a plain one. On their own they pay exactly like the ordinary version. The difference shows up if they form part of a win: instead of clearing away with the rest, they convert to wilds and stay for the next cascade in the chain. It is a small mechanic that matters more than it looks, because a wild parked on reel three is how a two-reel win becomes a three-reel win, which is how a second shield gets fed.
The Free Spins Round
Three or more scatters start the bonus with six free spins, and every additional scatter beyond the third adds two more, both on the trigger and on any retrigger inside the round. The rule that changes is simple: the shields no longer reset. Whatever they reach on spin one carries into spin two and onwards to the end of the round, and the crates keep feeding them the whole way. A bonus that opens with a couple of quiet spins can still finish enormous, because a x30 shield reached on spin five is a x30 shield on spin six as well. This is where essentially all of the 20,000x ceiling lives, and it is why the base game is allowed to be as thin as it is.
Golden Bet and the Feature Buys
Away from Great Britain the game carries a Golden Bet ante at 1.5x the stake that roughly doubles the chance of triggering, plus three direct purchases: 90x the bet for a standard six-spin round, 180x for a random round of six to ten spins, and 270x for a power round of six to ten spins with better odds on the stronger crate power-ups. None of that is available at a UK-licensed casino, because the Gambling Commission does not permit feature purchases. Worth knowing if you watch a streamed session of this game, since almost every one you find will be a bought bonus rather than a natural trigger.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- The three shields make the maths visible, so you always know how close a spin came
- Persistent multipliers in free spins give the bonus a genuinely open ceiling at 20,000x stake
- Crate power-ups that hit all three shields at once create real swings without needing a rare symbol
- 96.26% is a respectable default for a game with this kind of top end
- The artwork is properly drawn rather than assembled, and the tavern cast reacts as the round goes on
Cons
- Base spins are thin by design, and the shields resetting every spin makes long dry runs feel longer
- Reels one and five never carry a multiplier, so a chunk of the grid contributes nothing to the headline mechanic
- Feature buys and the Golden Bet are blocked for UK players, and the game was clearly tuned with them in place
- Nothing about the structure is new for Peter & Sons, so anyone who has played Greedy Alice will recognise the shape immediately
- Operators can run reduced RTP builds, so the 96.26% figure needs checking rather than assuming
Game Screenshot
The capture below catches a base spin part-way through a cascade. Three shields sit above the middle of the grid reading x1, x1 and x2, so at that moment only one reel is carrying anything at all. Two positions on the bottom row are ringed in orange, a glyph tablet and the red crystal artefact next to it, and the three wooden crates under the reels are shut, each fronted by a heavy iron ring pull. The tavern cast is all present around the edges: an armoured knight and a crowned king down the left with a red-haired archer beneath them, and on the right a wizard in a star-covered hat beside a skeleton playing a lute. The counters along the bottom read balance 999800, win 0 and bet 200, with no currency symbol anywhere, because this is the demo build running in coins rather than pounds.
Demo Play
The demo below runs on play money, so there is nothing to register and nothing to deposit. Use it for one thing in particular: sit through twenty or thirty base spins and watch how often the shields climb past x3 before the reset takes them away. That single observation tells you more about whether this game suits you than any RTP figure will.
Game Information
Expert Take
Reception has been warm rather than excited. The consistent praise is for structure: three multipliers, a crate reel feeding them and a bonus that removes the reset is a clean, readable design, and reviewers have said so. The consistent criticism is that the base game feels transactional, a long stretch of small wins that exist only to nudge a number that is about to be wiped. Both readings are right, and which one you land on depends almost entirely on whether you enjoy watching a meter fill. My own view after a long demo run is that Artifacts is a good game trapped in a slightly tedious base cycle. The bonus, when it arrives, is one of the better free spins rounds Peter & Sons has built, and the crate power-ups make each one different enough that you are not just watching the same round again. Getting there is the price.
Similar Slots to Try
These four come at Artifacts from different angles: the climbing multiplier, the cascade engine and the storybook fantasy dressing.
The closest match on the site for the core loop. A five-by-three cascade grid where the multiplier steps up with each consecutive win and keeps going through the free spins, wrapped in the same kind of painted fantasy artwork.
Take away the shields and this is what is left: a pure cascade slot where chains clear blocking stones and open the grid wider. Pick it if the tumbling is what you enjoyed rather than the multiplier maths.
A compounding multiplier that keeps building across a round, on a Megaways engine instead of fixed ways. The shape of the payout curve is very close even though the grid is not.
Far gentler maths and a much older design, but the same tavern-and-castle furniture. Worth a look if the setting drew you in and the volatility put you off.
About the Developer
Artifacts comes from Peter & Sons, a studio set up in 2019 that works out of Yerevan and Barcelona under the Maltese company Spinart Ltd. It is small by industry standards, with a catalogue somewhere past 45 slots and scratch titles, and it reached a UK audience mainly by joining Yggdrasil’s YG Masters programme in 2020. The house style is hard to mistake: thickly painted characters, a bit of grubbiness in the artwork, and maths that keeps almost everything back for the bonus. Barbarossa DoubleMax, Ghostfather, Peter Hunter and Book of Books are the releases that built the studio’s name, and Barbarossa Dragon Empire holds its highest ceiling at 40,000x. The full studio write-up sits on our Peter & Sons page.
The other Peter & Sons game reviewed here, and the clearest comparison. Same 20,000x cap and the same trick of freezing the multiplier reset in free spins, but on a six-by-five cluster grid with no ways or lines at all.
Artifacts Key Stats
Artifacts slot information last reviewed: July 2026
| Artifacts Slot Info | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Artifacts |
| Provider: | Peter & Sons |
| Developer Rank: | 6 out of 45+ Peter & Sons games |
| RTP: | 96.26% (Peter & Sons supplies reduced configurations on some titles, so check the game information screen before playing) |
| RTP Category: | Medium-High |
| RTP Rank: | Above the UK average and close to the middle of the 96.00% to 96.49% band |
| Feature Description: | Cascading wins, three reel multipliers above reels two, three and four, Feature Box power-ups, Golden Symbols that turn wild, free spins with persistent multipliers, Golden Bet ante and three feature buys (the ante and the buys are not offered to UK players). |
| Feature Categories: | Cascading Wins, Increasing Multipliers, Free Spins |
| Reels: | 5 |
| Rows: | 3 |
| Paylines: | None (243 ways to win, adjacent from the left) |
| Volatility: | Very High |
| Volatility Rank: | Very High, the top band we track, with a reported hit frequency of 23.49% |
| Min Bet: | £0.20 |
| Max Bet: | £50 |
| Max Win: | 20,000x stake |
| Release Date: | 19 March 2026 (an operator exclusive ran from 10 March 2026) |
| Slotslike Rank: | New listing, not yet ranked among our 4,300+ games (View Top 100) |
Slots with the Same Features
Artifacts sits in three of our feature categories: Cascading Wins, Increasing Multipliers and Free Spins.
Slots with Cascading Wins
Games where winners clear and new symbols drop into the gaps, so one spin can pay several times. The full set lives on the cascading wins page.
Cascades that upgrade symbols between drops instead of feeding a meter, which makes the chains matter for a completely different reason.
A brighter, breezier cascade slot where the accumulator does the collecting rather than a set of reel-mounted shields.
Slots with Increasing Multipliers
Games where a multiplier climbs as a round progresses rather than sitting at a fixed value. More of them on the increasing multipliers page.
The multiplier rises with the length of the cascade chain rather than with reel coverage, so it rewards one long sequence instead of several short ones.
Here the climb is tied to unlocking blocked positions, which turns the multiplier into a visible progress bar across the whole grid.
Slots with Free Spins
The category Artifacts leans on hardest, since almost all of its return is locked inside the round. Browse the free spins directory for more.
A darker fantasy bonus where collected symbols decide how the round behaves, rather than a meter that carries between spins.
A long-running Norse series with a free spins round split into selectable modes, useful for seeing how a bonus feels when you get to choose its shape.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the bonus feature work in Artifacts?
Three or more scatters award six free spins, with two extra spins for every scatter beyond the third, on the trigger and on retriggers. The change that matters is that the three reel multipliers above reels two, three and four stop resetting between spins. They keep whatever they have built for the rest of the round, and the crates below the reels carry on feeding them with adding and doubling power-ups, so a round that starts slowly can still finish very large.
What is the RTP of Artifacts?
96.26% on the default build, which every source we checked agrees on. That sits close to the middle of our medium-high band of 96.00% to 96.49% and a little above the UK average. Peter & Sons does supply reduced configurations on some of its games and operators choose which to run, so open the game information screen at your casino rather than assuming the headline figure applies.
What is the maximum win on Artifacts?
20,000x your stake, which is £1,000,000 from a £50 spin. Reaching it means a free spins round where the three shields have been pushed to extreme values by the crate power-ups and then a large win lands across all three of the middle reels at once. Treat it as a documented ceiling rather than a realistic target.
How volatile is Artifacts?
Very high. Peter & Sons records it as very high on its own game page, and that is the figure we follow, although a couple of slot databases file it a band lower at high. Hit frequency is reported at 23.49%, so a paying spin arrives a little less often than one in four, and most of those pay less than the spin cost. The base game is deliberately thin because the free spins round is carrying the entire top end. Expect long flat stretches rather than a steady trickle.
What are the best slots like Artifacts?
Wizard of Gems is the closest for the core loop, a cascading five-by-three grid with a multiplier that climbs and persists. Greedy Alice is the closest in feel, since it is the same studio doing the same trick on a cluster grid. Muertos Multiplier Megaways matches the compounding multiplier on a different engine, and Temple Tumble covers the cascade side on its own if the shields were not the appeal.
Can I play Artifacts for free?
Yes. A play-money demo is embedded on this page, and it runs the full game including the crates and the free spins round. The only thing you will not find in a UK version is the Golden Bet ante or any of the three feature buys, since the Gambling Commission does not allow feature purchases here.
Who makes Artifacts?
Peter & Sons, an independent studio founded in 2019 with offices in Yerevan and Barcelona, operating under the Maltese company Spinart Ltd. Artifacts was released on 19 March 2026 after a short operator exclusivity window that began on 10 March.
Why do reels one and five have no multiplier?
By design. Only the three middle reels carry shields, and only they sit above the crates that feed them. It keeps the maths contained, because a five-reel version of the same mechanic would raise the ceiling far beyond what a 96.26% game can support. In practice it means a win needs to reach into the middle of the grid to be worth much, which is why two-reel wins on the left feel so flat.
Our Verdict on Artifacts
Artifacts is a well-made game with an unglamorous base cycle. Peter & Sons has built something legible here, where you can see the shields, see the crates and understand exactly what a spin was worth and why, and that clarity is genuinely rare. The free spins round rewards it: persistent multipliers plus crate power-ups produce rounds that differ enough from each other to stay interesting, and the 20,000x ceiling is real rather than decorative. What holds it back is everything in between. Resetting three multipliers at the end of every base spin is mathematically sensible and emotionally punishing, and at a 23.49% hit rate you spend a lot of time watching progress get deleted. If you like a game that shows its working and you have the patience for the wait, this is a good one. If you want something happening on most spins, it will grind you down.
SlotsLike rating: 7.5/10
Set a deposit limit before you start and treat the demo as practice rather than a preview of results. Support is available from GamCare, BeGambleAware and the GamStop self-exclusion scheme, and our responsible gambling guide covers the blocking and limit tools in more detail.