Valentine’s Day: celebrating the game of love

According to scholars and history experts, the earliest roots of Valentine’s Day can be traced to certain practices from ancient Roman times, but none of them can be conclusively confirmed as their true origin. A broad consensus today is that the modern version of Valentine’s Day originates in a Christian feast day honouring the martyr Saint Valentine and that it wasn’t of a romantic but religious nature. Much less certain is how this religious festivity itself came to be: some claim it arose from embellished legends of Saint Valentine, an ancient Roman priest who was imprisoned for helping persecuted Christians.

Some versions of this tale claim that he was interrogated by the Roman emperor Claudius II who then had him executed, that he performed miracles while in jail, and even that it was he who sent the first ever “valentine” card signed “Your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter whom he healed from blindness.

On the other hand, there are similarities between Valentine’s Day and the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia in mid-February, although the festival was not romantic but celebrated the coming of spring, rejuvenation, fertility and health. It was dedicated to Pan and Juno, pagan gods of love, marriage and fertility. In those times, there was no notion of romantic love as we understand it now, although of course people fell in and out of love all the time. Partnership, marriage and fertility were celebrated as key features of the traditional family, the most important pillar of society even today.

The main motivation for marriage, however, was convenience, unlike today when it usually involves passion and affection. You married or got married to those who brought about the best prospects for a good life and for many healthy children who would secure the continuation of your family line. Romantic love can help with all that, of course, but it certainly wasn’t considered enough for that, partnership considerations were simply different then. When it came to marriage, ancient Rome was all Tina Turner about it: what’s love got to do with it?

Centuries later, Christianity began replacing paganism as the main religious option. Unsurprisingly, in the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I forbade the celebration of Lupercalia due to its pagan roots and officially declared February 14 Saint Valentine’s Day. He intended to replace the heathen festival with a Christian celebration, as was the case with many other pagan traditions that were later reimagined and repurposed within Christian lore and context. Valentine’s Day has kept its religious significance for hundreds of years, and it was only towards the 14th or 15th century that the holiday became a celebration of romantic love.

In the Middle Ages, notions of courtly love flourished, mostly as a result of roaming troubadours who wrote romantic poems and sang about pure and immaculate feelings of total devotion for their beloved court ladies. In late medieval England, Geoffrey Chaucer of The Canterbury Tales fame, generally considered the father of English poetry, wrote a poem titled Parliament of Fowls, in which he recounts his dream vision of a convention of birds choosing their future mates. Metaphors of nature abounded in lyrical literature of that time and with them, allegories of “lovebirds” of early spring as well, since mid-February is the avian mating period. Chaucer’s work marks a shift in the understanding of Saint Valentine’s Day as a romantic instead of a religious celebration. In that period, the festivity shed some old connotations and took on new meanings it didn’t have before.

A few centuries later, in 18th-century England, as these new meanings took a stronger hold, Valentine’s Day grew into an occasion for people to express their affection for each other by presenting flowers and confectionery and sending greeting cards today better known as "valentines". This practice became truly massive in the 19th century with the introduction of the mass-produced greeting cards that replaced previously hand-made ones, and imagery such as birds, roses, heart shapes and chubby winged Cupids, another ancient Roman element, was established to represent the idea of romantic love celebrated on Valentine’s Day.

Nowadays, love is present in all aspects of popular culture. Proverbially able to conquer all, it did indeed conquer fields it was absent from earlier and even entered new and modern phenomenons such as video gaming. While there are some successful slot games dedicated to romance, the theme never became as popular as the ubiquitous ancient Egyptian or the lucky Irish themes. This is perhaps bound to change, and when it does, Indigo Magic’s Charming Hearts will surely have played a big part in this.

The action takes place on a beautifully drawn background with a fish pond at the forefront and a picturesque castle in the background: this is where the protagonist of the story, a beautiful maiden princess lives. The first impression is of a game that is very attractively drawn. The colours are strong and vivid, just like you would expect from a game that revolves around love. Characters on symbols are animated smoothly and gracefully and perform different gestures according to what’s happening in the game. You can click or tap the symbols to see their respective payout values, and the two side bet options have these explainer windows as well. The interface isn’t just pretty but also helpful and handy.

The game employs a 5x4 grid, it is played on 40 paylines and its volatility is listed in the range between medium and high. The heart-shaped love potion scatters trigger the free spins feature but have no payline value, while the princess symbol is wild and upgrades other character symbols. Mid-paying symbols include three different frogs that can be upgraded to high-paying symbols. These are depicted with three prince suitors competing for the hand of the princess. They all look both cute and goofy at the same time and set the tone for the entire game that amuses with its buoyant and bubbly disposition. Royal symbols are made of flowers and twigs floating on water lily pads, reflecting the connection between romantic love and nature. All animated characters except the princess carry red roses, another common symbol of romantic love. The choice of frogs as secondary characters isn’t random, of course, it is a reference to the popular fairytale of the princess who kisses a frog to lift its curse and turn it back into a charming prince.

The main winning combo generator in this game is the pretty princess: her role is to create massive payouts with her ability to upgrade other character symbols. If the princess is charmed by her suitors by landing in the charming hot zone in the middle of grid three, she starts randomly blowing kisses to mid and high-paying symbols that you landed in that spin. Frogs get promoted this way to corresponding princes, while princes are upgraded by becoming wild and/or wild multipliers. Multipliers are added together and this can result in both more and richer winning paylines, especially in the free spins feature.

The free spins are triggered by landing the love potion scatter within the previously mentioned hot zone. The game then lets you choose a prince who will court the princess and try to win her heart. Each prince has a different volatility level and grants a different number of free spins. You get eight free spins from the prince that gets x5 or x10 multipliers from the princess, ten free spins with the mid-volatility prince that gets x3, x4 or x5 multipliers, and twelve free spins from the prince with multipliers of x1, x2 or x3. This option lets you strategize your gameplay, play the main feature the way you want and ride your luck at your own pace.

On top of that, this phase includes another handy mechanic, namely the love meter with three heart slots. Each upgrade of a prince fills the meter by one heart, and a full meter upgrades the lowest-value frog into the prince you chose at the beginning of the phase. When no more upgrades are possible, filling the love meter grants additional spins.

All this sounds impressive and rewarding by itself, but it’s not all. You can push your luck even further by turning on and off two tempting side bet options for an additional fee: 25% of your current bet to double the chances of landing princess wilds, and 50% to double the chances of triggering the free spins feature. This works best together as you can then enjoy more lucrative free spins phases more often, but you also don’t have to use it at all. The game offers plenty of versatility and freedom to tailor gameplay to your personal preferences.

As we’ve seen, the contemporary notion of romantic love and how it is celebrated is a multifaceted phenomenon that includes ideas developed in antiquity, adopted in and from the Middle Ages, and reinterpreted in modern times. Displays of love and affection today rely on themes and motifs from the far and the not-so-distant past, combined with a more recent reimagining of the universal theme of love. Nowadays, ideas from earlier ages coexist in harmony with more modern notions, attitudes and practices, to the effect that even seemingly outdated symbols and practices can be reused and recycled attractively: for love never goes out of style.

Valentine’s Day today has a rich and complex history spanning centuries of cultural progress and adaptation, but it’s also a very simple acknowledgment that we, put simply, love to love, and that we love to show our love this way or the other. It’s not surprising, then, that romantic love can be attractively combined with other passions in life. There is a strong synergy between two different activities that both make our hearts run faster, and there’s a lot of potential in the marriage between lyrical and passionate love, and epic, thrilling and captivating gameplay typical of casino slot gaming. Charming Hearts convincingly illustrates how the two can work together to establish a compelling experience full of suspense, passion and joy. Give it a spin - and you will love it, too.