Codex of Fortune

Codex of Fortune is NetEnt's reworked take on its older release Turn Your Fortune, keeping much of the same French Art Nouveau visual style while quietly overhauling the numbers underneath. It's played across a 5-reel, 4-row grid with 40 fixed paylines, and the changes NetEnt made turn a fairly forgettable game into something with genuine appeal for RTP-conscious players.

Theme and gameplay feel

Visually, Codex of Fortune is close kin to its predecessor — an ornate, faintly French-inspired aesthetic runs through the font and symbol design, with the most obvious change being a shift from Turn Your Fortune's burgundy backdrop to a midnight-blue palette here. Symbols include J-A playing card royals for the low end, moving up through shells, fish, turtles, owls and lions as the premium icons, with any symbol capable of landing stacked across the reels for the chance at big, grid-filling combinations. A Fabergé-styled butterfly wild fills in across the reels to help stitch together wins.

What the RTP means for you

This is where Codex of Fortune gets genuinely interesting. Because one of its features involves a degree of player strategy, the RTP isn't fixed at a single number — it can range from 90.2% up to a maximum of 98% depending on the approach taken, with the average, no-strategy outcome sitting around 96%. That 98% ceiling is an excellent figure by any standard, but it's worth understanding that reaching it depends on how you play the strategic element rather than being guaranteed on every spin — well worth reading the in-game rules before chasing the top end.

Volatility and hit frequency

NetEnt has dialled up the volatility here compared with the original Turn Your Fortune, moving it into high-volatility territory. That's balanced by a hit frequency of roughly 25.4%, so a winning combination lands, on average, about once every four spins — frequent enough to keep the reels feeling alive even as the game holds out for its bigger high-volatility payouts.

Max win and betting range

Five-of-a-kind combinations of the premium symbols pay between 3x and 10x stake, with the real upside coming from stacked wilds and full-grid combinations that can push results toward the game's 10,000x maximum win. Stakes run from 20p up to 100 per spin, giving room to size bets according to how aggressively you want to chase that top-end potential.

Verdict

Codex of Fortune takes a fairly ordinary predecessor and turns it into something sharper — high volatility, a rare 98% RTP ceiling, and a chunky 10,000x max win make it worth a look for more experienced players. Test the strategic RTP element for yourself in the free demo on johnessyslots before deciding how to approach it with real stakes.