PG Soft has two slots called Medusa, and the demo on this page is the first of them: Medusa 1: The Curse of Athena, released in 2018. It tells the part of the myth before the snakes, when Medusa is still a beauty, Poseidon is at her side and Athena's curse is yet to come. PG Soft went back to Greek myth in 2022 with Midas Fortune, the king whose touch turns symbols to gold. Underneath the story is a classic 5x3 game with 30 fixed lines, two mini-reel features that rewrite the board, and free spins with added wilds and a prize meter. I went through every rules screen in the demo and checked it against PG Soft's own information sheet, so the numbers below are the studio's.
United States
Medusa available at Cafe Casino
Same game, real money
Cafe Casino runs the same Medusa with the same math and adds a welcome bonus for players from the United States:
300% up to $2,000 + 150 FS 18+ · T&Cs apply · the demo stays free
Medusa 1 or Medusa II?
The two games share a name, a 5x3 grid and 30 lines, which is why they are often mixed up. The demo shell here is titled Medusa, and its rules screen calls the game Medusa 1. The other title, Medusa II: The Quest of Perseus, follows the hero who comes to hunt the Gorgon. These are the figures that tell them apart:
| Medusa 1: The Curse of Athena | Medusa II: The Quest of Perseus | |
|---|---|---|
| Story | Medusa, Poseidon and Athena's curse | Perseus hunting Medusa |
| Grid | 5 x 3, 30 fixed lines | 5 x 3, 30 lines |
| RTP | 95.29% | 94.96% |
| Top figure from PG Soft | 529x, best result in 1 billion simulated spins | 2,000x, cap listed on the game page |
The two maximums are different kinds of number: a cap is a ceiling the game cannot pass, while 529x is what actually happened in PG Soft's simulation. And if you have read about a 3-4-5-4-3 grid or 50 lines for this slot, the demo has neither.
Thirty fixed lines and three reels for the wild
The board is five reels of three symbols, and all 30 lines are always active, so the stake is bet size times bet level times 30. Wins pay from the leftmost reel to the right, only the best win on each line is paid, and wins on different lines add up. The wild substitutes for everything except the scatter, but it can only land on reels two, three and four.
This is the opening screen at the default 18.00 stake. The portrait on reel two is Medusa before the curse (in Legend of Perseus she returns as the scatter), joint top symbol with Poseidon, and the wild sits on reel four, one of its three allowed reels. In the rules illustrations, the mini reels pop up in the small temple above the message plaque.
The 30 line shapes are the usual mix of straight rows, V shapes and zigzags. Lines 28 to 30 are the odd ones out: each runs four symbols along one row and steps up or down a row on reel five.
Every line starts on reel one, and the wild never lands there. A symbol missing from the first reel ends a line before it begins, and that matters for both features below.
The mini reels: Medusa's Kiss and Poseidon's Power
In any base game spin, three small reels can appear above the main ones, each spinning to show either Medusa or Poseidon. The rules only reward three of a kind. Three Medusas trigger Medusa's Kiss: at the end of the spin, three to five random symbols on the main reels turn into Medusa symbols. Wilds, scatters and symbols that are already Medusa are never picked.
Medusa pays 15, 50 and 500 for three, four and five on a line, so the Kiss is only as good as where the new portraits land. In the rules illustration it lines up four of them along the top row from reel one. The straight top-row line alone pays 50 times bet size and level for that, about 1.67x the stake.
Three Poseidons trigger Poseidon's Power instead: every symbol on two or three random reels turns into aces, kings, queens or jacks.
Here the arithmetic is neat. In the illustration, reels one to three become queens, so every one of the 30 lines starts with three queens and pays at least 5. That is 30 x 5 = 150 times bet size and level, exactly 5x the stake, or 90.00 at the default 18.00. Aces or kings on the same three reels pay at least 8 per line, which makes 8x. If the chosen reels do not start at reel one, nothing is guaranteed, because every line still has to begin on the first reel.
PG Soft's sheet puts 10.07 of the 95.29 RTP points in the mini reels and credits them with 1.77% of spins in its hit-rate breakdown, roughly one in 56. They are switched off during free spins and on the spin that triggers them.
Free spins: added wilds, no retrigger
Three, four or five scatters anywhere award 10, 15 or 20 free spins, played at the stake that triggered them. While the reels spin, three wilds can be added on reels two, three and four. One rule makes the round shorter than it looks: the scatter does not appear during free spins, so the count you start with is the count you get.
The round is rare and heavy. Free spins hit on 0.71% of spins in PG Soft's numbers, about once in 141, and they carry 30.09 RTP points, almost a third of the return. Ganesha Gold leans on its bonus even harder, with 43.70 of its 96.08 points in free spins, while Medusa's base game and mini reels supply the other two thirds.
The Special Meter: up to 48x on top
During free spins, every Medusa and Poseidon symbol that lands is added to the Special Meter after the wins are paid. The meter has four milestones: 12 symbols pay 3x the total bet, 24 pay 5x, 37 pay 10x and 50 pay 30x. Reach all four and the meter alone has paid 48x.
The last milestone is worth more than the best line in the game, since five Medusas on a line come to 16.7x the stake. It also explains why five scatters matter more than the extra spins suggest. Fifty portraits over 10 free spins means five of them on a 15-position board every spin; over 20 free spins it is two and a half.
Line pays measured against the stake
The paytable values are multiplied by bet size and bet level, and a spin costs 30 times that product. Dividing by 30 shows what a single line is worth against your whole stake.
Even five Medusas on one line are 16.7x, and five jacks only return the stake. Wins in this game come from several lines at once, which is exactly what the two mini-reel features are built to produce:
| Symbol | 3 / 4 / 5 on a line | 5 on a line vs stake |
|---|---|---|
| Medusa, Poseidon | 15 / 50 / 500 | 16.7x |
| Snake ring | 10 / 30 / 200 | 6.7x |
| Lyre | 10 / 30 / 150 | 5x |
| A | 8 / 15 / 100 | 3.3x |
| K | 8 / 15 / 80 | 2.7x |
| Q | 5 / 10 / 50 | 1.7x |
| J | 5 / 10 / 30 | 1x |
Medusa 1 by the numbers
The figures below come from PG Soft's information sheet for the game, version 2.5 updated in March 2019, and from the rules inside the demo; the release date is SlotCatalog's. Medusa is one of the older titles in the PG Soft game catalog, and its sheet is unusually detailed:
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Provider | PG Soft |
| Full name | Medusa 1: The Curse of Athena |
| Released | 30 July 2018 |
| Reels / lines | 5 x 3, 30 fixed lines |
| RTP | 95.29% (main game 55.13%, mini reels 10.07%, free spins 30.09%) |
| Volatility | Medium |
| Hit rate | 29.81% overall; free spins 0.71% |
| Free spins | 10 / 15 / 20 for 3 / 4 / 5 scatters, no retrigger |
| Special Meter | 3x, 5x, 10x and 30x at 12, 24, 37 and 50 symbols |
| Max win | 529x, best result in 1 billion simulated spins |
| Bet in the demo | 0.90 to 270 per spin |
The sheet's win banners are worth knowing before you play, because they start low. A Big Win here is 5x to 15x the stake and shows up about once in 60 spins, a Mega Win 15x to 35x once in 130, and a Super Mega Win anything above 35x, once in 641. Leprechaun Riches does not call anything under 20x a Big Win, so a celebration in Medusa means less. The ceiling is modest too, with 529x as the best result in a billion simulated spins.
Stake: 0.90 to 270 in the demo
The Bet Options panel shows the formula plainly: bet size, times a bet level from 1 to 10, times 30 lines. The default 18.00 is 0.30 x 2 x 30.
Bet sizes in the demo are 0.03, 0.10, 0.30 and 0.90, so a spin costs from 0.90 (0.03 x 1 x 30) to 270.00 (0.90 x 10 x 30). PG Soft's default casino setup in the sheet is 0.30 to 150 in euros, with bet sizes of 0.01, 0.10 and 0.50, and the real-money limits you see depend on the casino and currency.
Medusa demo: FAQ
Is the Medusa demo free to play?
Is this Medusa 1 or Medusa 2?
What do Medusa's Kiss and Poseidon's Power do?
Can you retrigger the free spins in Medusa?
What is the RTP of Medusa?
What is the maximum win in Medusa?
Verdict
Medusa 1 is a 2018 game and plays like one: 30 fixed lines, a 95.29% RTP that is lower than the other PG Soft games I have rechecked against the studio's sheets, and a 529x ceiling that rules out huge wins. What keeps it interesting is the pair of mini-reel features, which can turn three reels into a screen of royals or drop extra Medusas across the board, and the Special Meter, which turns a long free spins round into a chase for 48x. Play the demo for those moments; if you want a big multiplier story, this is not the Medusa for it.