Being entertained by a group of former US presidents could mean you're watching Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves rob banks in the film Point Break, or you're playing Magic Money Maze from Pragmatic Play and associate studio Reel Kingdom. Well, there could be others but let's go with it. In Magic Money Maze, a quartet of presidents from yesteryear accompany players as they attempt to extract wins from a game with an actual money maze type device as its central feature. Calling it magical is a bit of a stretch, though.
Maximising the historical feel the four presidents evoke, Pragmatic Play has given Magic Money Maze a thoroughly old-time vibe. A kind of Revolutionary War/Continental Army-style music adds spirit to the base game before the soundtrack goes all sort of ragtime in the bonus round. Sticking with the base game, for now, players get a gold-framed set of 5 reels, each holding 3 symbols and providing 10 ways to win. The decoration consists largely of coins, and bank notes, scattered about the screen before a green-black background.
Statistically, Magic Money Maze is a highly volatile slot which comes in three RTP configurations, maxing out at 96.61% before dropping to 95.51% or 94.53%. The way of squeezing coins out of the base game is by landing matching symbols on adjacent reels from the left-most side – most symbols need at least three of a kind to do so, with the exception of the top premium, which pays out for two of a kind. Getting the reels spinning costs 10 p/c to $/€250 per paid game round, while the action is available on mobiles, tablets, and desktop devices.
Starting on the less valuable side of the paytable are 10, J, Q, K and A icons, paying 10-20x the bet when landing five across a payline. Moving on up are four presidents, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and 'Honest Abe' Abraham Lincoln, as the high pays, where five of a kind is worth 50-200 times the stake. There isn't a wild symbol, but there is a Money Symbol represented by a stack of cash displaying a value of 0.1 to 1,000x the bet. Landing 3 or 4 Money Symbols is worth 3x or 15x the bet, while landing five of them on a payline pays their face values. Money Symbols can also be awarded in the bonus game, up next.
The Magic Money Maze logo symbol is the ticket to the bonus round. Landing 3, 4, or 5 of these Bonus symbols activates the Magic Money Maze Board Bonus with 1, 2, or 4 lives, respectively. The bonus round is played on a 7x7 game board with 49 squares. A dice rolls, and players move their token in a clockwise direction around the board. The squares display blank spaces, or one of these:
Making it to the middle square on the board increases the money symbol values by x2, then x3, x4, x5, and x10 – the multiplier increases each time you make it to the middle. Players go round and round the board until all of their lives are lost. Then whatever is accrued in the prize pot is awarded, and players return to the main game.
On a final note, those in applicable jurisdictions may be able to buy entry to the bonus round for the cost of 120x the bet. This buys you a triggering game round with at least three Bonus symbols landing in view.
Once again, the Pragmatic Play/Reel Kingdom team have come up with a singularly unusual game which might captivate a certain type of gambler while leaving others cold. There's precedence here. Reel Kingdom has a track record of bringing board games and slots together, for better or worse. Previously, for example, they released Snakes & Ladders Megadice, then came Tic Tac Take, and now Magic Money Maze. This one lacks the famous games that the other two slots had, but if you're the sort of player who's been hankering for a presidents meets board game slot, here's something to try.
Magic Money Maze's board game bonus round is a bit more home-grown than others out there. It's simple. A dice rolls, you move around the grid, looking to collect cash, multipliers, or lives while hoping to avoid the scorpions and snakes. What scorpions and snakes have to do with US Presidents is anyone's guess, but one of Reel Kingdom's calling cards is tossing in random elements which don't seem to fit somehow. Magic Money Maze doesn't have anywhere near the complexity or intensity of, say, Dead Man's Trail from Relax Gaming. Interestingly though, it has a surprisingly high max win of 10,000x the stake. Well, that's the win cap. A few good dice rolls will no doubt be needed to get anywhere near hitting that amount. Multipliers are injected into the game in two different ways, so who knows.
In some ways, Magic Money Maze feels even more niche than the other board game slots Reel Kingdom/Pragmatic Play has done. On the one hand, the base game is a pretty standard, almost Western kind of slot with presidents, while the action shifts to something completely different for the bonus round. The solid potential adds legitimacy, and Magic Money Maze might have been easier to brush aside if the win cap was less impressive. Magic Money Maze lacks the name recognition of tic tac toe or snakes and ladders, but that shouldn't hold it back from players intrigued by its unique mixture.
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