A few weeks back, we heard that a new John Hunter slot was coming down the interactive gaming pipe. We were surprised that we were not aware of this sooner, given the high-profile nature of this franchise. At the tail end of February 2025, a press release for this game was sent out, and once it arrived in our inbox, we read that Pragmatic Play now considers John Hunter its most popular game series. That is not a shocker, but we would think that maybe that honor should fall onto Pragmatic’s Gates of Olympus or Sweet Bonanza franchises. Its Gold one has also shown tremendous staying power. Yet, who are we to doubt the creator of all these games? If they say – John Hunter is their most popular series. Then, it must be so.
Galileo’s Secrets came out first at exclusive sites on the 10th of February 2025, and then it got a wide release ten days later. As expected, in the first week following its debut, this adventurer slot was pulling in great numbers, ranking in the top ten in Finland, Malta, and Argentina and in the top fifty in multiple other markets. At the time of writing, it was the best-performing John Hunter spinner, with Book of Fallen ranking in second place. Here, we tell you if this title brings something novel to the world of this famed adventurer or if it is just another dull addition to this globally famous franchise.
Theme & Design
In the past, Rich Wilde dominated the online gambling realm as its main Indiana Jones rip-off character. However, over the years, multiple contenders have appeared. From this batch, John Hunter has been the fiercest. It is not unreasonable to say that John Hunter may have overtaken Rich Wilde in terms of global popularity, as titles from this series seem to rank somewhat better than ones from Play’n GO’s legendary adventurer franchise.
Off the top of our head, there should be ten games in the John Hunter story, with the first one being John Hunter and the Secrets of Da Vinci’s Treasure, released in 2018. Aside from Pragmatic Play’s hat-wearing model-like adventurer and the dark-haired Rich, the online casino domain has loads of other similar heroes, many of which do not have names. We can think of Ed Jones, a Spinmatic Indiana Jones clone, and we are drawing a blank on coming up with any other names. But we can tell you that Red Tiger recently added such a character in their Cash Explorer game. Swintt has one. So does BGaming, Skywind, and many others.
Regarding the presentation of Galileo’s Secrets, it is about what you would expect. Of course, given the name of this game, the presentation here includes Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de’ Galilei, the famous Italian astronomer recognized as the father of observational astronomy. He does not appear in this basic-looking game, but the setting here is what we assume is his observatory.
The presentation in this slot is uninspiring, and IT looks like something that Pragmatic Play would have put out five years ago. It has the same old painterly graphics that this company’s teams used to always use and some Okay animations to give the on-grid happenings some life.
That said, the music in Galileo’s Secrets is pretty good, as it is a mysterious, cartoony tune that adds a unique, fantastical feeling to the gameplay here. But, it is not enough to dramatically boost the engagement the presentation delivers.
You get the same old Pragmatic Play interfaces in John Hunter and Galileo’s Secrets, with the spin functions and the bet selector sitting below the lower right corner of the symbol layout.
Specs & Gameplay
You get the standard 5×3 grid in this John Hunter game, which has ten paylines and comes in three RTP versions. These are 96.5%, 95.5%, and 94.5%. The hit frequency here is one in five, and the likelihood of you entering the free spin round of this slot is one in one hundred and forty-seven spins. The max win of this title is x5,000 your stake, and you face a 2.2 million probability to walk away with such a prize in your session.
We should not forget to add that the variance level is high here, and the betting range is the traditional $0.10 to $250, the one that Pragmatic Play dominantly implements in its games nowadays.
As far as getting rewards in this slot, you must line up two to five identical tokens on adjacent reels, left to right, on one of the ten paylines. The low-pay ones are A, K, Q, and J royals. Their high-pay siblings are an ink glass, a scroll, a telescope, a sand clock, a globe, and John Hunter himself. The latter three symbols can pay out wins for just two tokens landing on a payline, and all the other have a three-symbol minimum for prize combo creation. The premiums pay out x15 to x100 wins for five-of-a-kind combos, and the royals deliver rewards from x7.5 to x10 when five matching royals hit.
There are no wilds in this game.
Bonus Features
Onto the bonus features of this spinner. We begin by telling you about the Mystery Symbol Feature. When a Mystery symbol appears fully stacked, it transforms all rows into random pay tokens or money ones. The transformed ones pay across all reels, even if they are not adjacent after line wins get calculated. If enough money symbols get revealed through the full mystery stack. The Respin feature gets triggered.
When that happens, money symbols land with values up to x5,000 or they can trigger the free spins or super free spin mode. Landing six or more money symbols activates the respin feature. At this point, all regular symbols disappear, leaving only money ones. You begin with three respins, and only blanks or additional money symbols land. Each new money symbol resets the respin counter to three. These tokens remain locked in place until the feature ends. The round concludes when respins run out or the grid gets filled. The total value of all visible money symbols then gets awarded. If every position is occupied, an extra 2,000x payout gets granted.
Landing three scatters, book tokens activate the free spin round, where a random pay symbol or money symbol gets designated as the mystery one for this feature. If two scatters and a super scatter land, the Super Free Spin round gets activated instead. Here, the money symbol always gets chosen as the mystery one. No gamble option is available before starting. The level of the round gets determined by the selected mystery symbol. You have a bronze, silver, gold, and super level. Before the free spins begin, you can gamble and upgrade the mystery symbol or move up a level. However, losing the gamble forfeits the entire round.
During the free spin mode, mystery symbols nudge to become fully stacked, then reveal the designated mystery token. If enough appear, the Respin feature gets instantly triggered. Additionally, scatter symbols are collected in a meter, and for every four, the round upgrades to the next level, introducing a new mystery token and giving you two more free spins.
You can buy the free spin mode for a cost of x80 and the super free spin one for x200.
GOSU Verdict
We will not go on very long with our conclusion as we wrote a lot above. In short, we did not like this game. We found it dull. We found everything about it boring. Its gameplay was not exciting and did not appeal to us, and its visuals were very passe. We do not understand why Pragmatic Play’s team seemingly took a step back in time and gave us graphics that would have been at home in older slots from this provider. For us, Galileo’s Secrets is a definite pass.
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