Developer Pragmatic Play transports players to the majestic North America wilderness for a spot of gaming in a cliché fest titled Mystic Chief. What is it about this part of the world that inspires software providers to return to again and again? Someone could probably write a doctoral thesis on the iGaming world's fetishizing of Native American culture in slots. Maybe they already have. Whatever the deep-seated compulsion to return to this well-trod ground might be, we are back in a game rife with generic imagery, full reel wild multipliers, wild transformations, and free spins.
Okay, the landscape is spectacular, and Pragmatic Play has made it even more magical by saturating the scene in pink and purple tones. The background depicts a tepee camp laid out before cacti, canyons, and a shooting star-filled sky, plus there's plenty of mystic lighting, dramatic panpipe laden music, wolves howling, etcetera etcetera. Pragmatic Play has gone through the checklist for these sorts of games and ticked off each box without scratching a millimetre below the surface for something more unique. There's a good chance players will either be enchanted with the result or utterly indifferent to seeing the same reheated chestnuts.
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Played on a 5-reel game grid arranged in a 3-4-4-4-3 formation, means players get 576 ways to win. Row height is irrelevant in forming a winning combination, as long as matching symbols land adjacently, starting at the leftmost reel. A highly volatile game rated 5 out of 5, Mystic Chief has a theoretical return value of 96.55% - though the return is variable, so it may be found lower. Any device is suitable for playing the game on, providing a range of stakes from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin.
Mystic Chief's paytable mixes it up between low pay inanimate objects and high pay living breathing organisms. In ascending order are totems, pipes, hatchets, sheathed daggers, drums, cougars, wolves, horses, eagles, and a female character. Landing five high pays across the grid results in a payout worth 1.5 to 5 times the stake. Wilds are included as well and appear in two forms, which we'll cover below.
As mentioned previously, wilds appear in two sizes - an expanding wild and a regular wild. Both types appear on reels 2, 3, or 4 and substitute for any of the regular paying symbols. Whenever a 1x1 wild symbol hits naturally, it expands to cover all positions on its respective reel. Expanding wilds also get a random win multiplier from x1 to x10, which is applied to any wins. If more than two multiplier wilds are present, their values are added together before being applied.
In the base game, whenever 2 dream catcher bonus symbols land, a random number of pay symbols on reels 2-4 are transformed into non-expanding 1x1 wild symbols. The bonus symbol appears only on reels 1 and 5.
The golden symbol is a scatter, appearing on reels 2, 3, or 4. When 3 scatters are in view, 8 free spins are awarded. In the bonus round, an expanding wild symbol is guaranteed to land on every free spin. In regular free spin, every time a bonus symbol lands, an extra free spin is awarded. In a twist, if 2 bonus symbols hit at the same time, +2 extra free spins are awarded, and the feature upgrades to super free spins.
In super free spins, the 2 triggering bonus symbols remain sticky till the end. Doing so means a random number of symbols on reels 2-4 are transformed into non-sticky wilds on every super free spin. Since additional bonus symbols cannot land, super free spins cannot be retriggered.
If there's a picture of a dolphin leaping from the sea, backlit by a full moon, then Mystic Chief could be just the thing – and as always, we don't judge. However, if prairies aren't your area of interest, then Mystic Chief comes across as an unimaginative collection of generic imagery from this slot genre rammed into one place. Sort of like those archaic black and white Western films where white actors were smothered in makeup and spoke broken English to pass off as the indigenous population.
The gameplay and features aren't too bad, but you have to dig deep beneath the clichés to find them. The 576 pay ways work well with full reel wilds when they appear, as you might imagine, and landing an expanding wild with a juicy multiplier is icing on the cake. Symbol values aren't massive, so any help you can get to boost them is appreciated. Hitting more than one expanding wild at the same time is technically possible though it was a highly rare occurrence during testing, so don't rely on that to rescue a battered balance. Wild multipliers will no doubt be required to hit the games full potential, which has been capped at 5,000x the bet.
Sometimes, the extras can hinder as much as they can help, specifically in super free spins. Since the bonus symbols are sticky but not wild, they block a position on both the first and last reel. The wild transformations they provide are a form of compensation and can lead to positive outcomes, yet they can still be irritating. Then again, the bonus game triggers every 217 spins on average, and not every trigger leads to super free spins, so blocking bonus symbols is not an irritant that will come up too often.
If you're in the mood for some average, North American gaming, then Mystic Chief could well be a suitable option. On the other hand, if you prefer games with a drop of thematic originality, then saddle up your horse and spur it till you are miles away from this clichéd reductionism.
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