Wands at the ready, players, software provider Pragmatic Play is getting its mage on in Spellbinding Mystery. In this magically minded slot, the goal is to combine a group of regents just so to potentially conjure your very own batch of monetary magic. In terms of regents, Spellbinding Mystery is a cluster-paying grid slot with a heady mix of wild multipliers, Mystery symbols, free spins (where Mystery symbols repeat), and a bonus buy.
The word magic can have different meanings in different contexts to different people. For example, some may be spellbound by the 'magic' of a double rainbow; others might find the technology we take for granted a form of 'magic'. In Spellbinding Mystery, we're talking about magic in the context of spells, witchcraft, and wizardry. One clue is the warlock figure, jiggling about next to the gaming grid; Pragmatic Play does like to put characters in its games to join players on their adventures. With glowing blue staff, the wizard character adds voice overs, depending on what is happening on the reels, and succeeds in giving Spellbinding Mystery extra life and a bit of mystique.
>With a 5 out of 5 rating, Spellbinding Mystery is a highly volatile slot played on a 7 by 7-sized matrix. This means 49 symbols drop onto the grid with each spin, which players can wager 20 p/c to $/€100 on. With a variety of RTP models to keep an eye out for, the maximum value is 96.04% when playing the default way or 96.1% when buying free spins. Doing so costs 100x the base bet.
All of Spellbinding Mystery's symbols pay when at least 7 of them land in blocks connected in horizontal or vertical directions. For lows, the game's got 4 rune-like tokens in various colours, then a green potion bottle, a pink potion bottle, a scroll, a hat, and a bright green grimoire as the premiums. Hitting a 7-symbol winning cluster pays 0.5 to 1.5 times the stake, while on the upper end of the table, a full-screen 49-symbol win is worth 100 to 500 times the bet. Payout values can be augmented by Spellbinding Mystery's wild symbol. Not only does the wild symbol substitute for any regular pay symbol, but in the base game, the wild can have a random multiplier of x1 to x5, which is applied to all combos it is part of. When more than 1 wild is part of the same win, their multipliers multiply each other.
>Two other symbols to be aware of in Spellbinding Mystery are its Mystery symbol and scatter, which is needed to trigger the free spins round.
At the end of a spin, if any star Mystery symbols are in view, they all transform into the same symbol type. This can be any of the regular paying symbols at random.
Hitting 3 scatter symbols on reels 2, 4, and 6 awards players with 10 free spins. During free spins, whenever a Mystery symbol hits, it highlights the position it landed on until the feature ends. After each free spin, all marked spots transform into Mystery symbols. Whenever a Mystery symbol lands on a position that was not already marked, it may randomly award +1 free spin. Also, whenever wilds land on a free spin, they will always do so with a multiplier of x2, x4, x6, x8, or x10.
>It would be hard to describe Spellbinding Mystery as a white-hot cauldron overflowing with masses of innovative features, but what it's got has been well stirred to bring everything to a heated bubble. Spellbinding Mystery is a game that didn't make a major first impression when it first hit the screen. The paytable looked a little sparse for a cluster paying grid slot, maybe more so for those used to grid slots which pile on features when winning symbols are collected. Heck, Spellbinding Mystery doesn't even use a tumble/reaction/avalanche feature when wins land. They just hit, and that's it. At first, it seemed like Spellbinding Mystery was going to be straitjacketed by its limitations.
But, first impressions don't always last, and like a frog happily sitting in a pot of water as it is brought up to a boil, Spellbinding Mystery's appeal grew as the session progressed. It might not have an extensively long list of features and extras, yet if ever a game made good with what it has, it's Spellbinding Mystery. For one, wild symbols have been pepped up with multipliers, and if more than one wild multiplier is part of a winning cluster, their values multiply - always an appreciated touch. Second, while Mystery symbols might be a bit so-so in the base game, they can really shine in free spins through the marking of grid positions. Mark a lot of them, and there can be a substantial number of Mystery symbol transformations on each free spin for the rest of the feature. Cluster values aren't bad either, and when combined with a wild multiplier (or more than one), you can see how this machine comes with a winning potential of 10,000x the bet.
So no, Spellbinding Mystery might not be the next Reactoonz or anything like that, but this doesn't prevent it from working its own brand of magic on the right punter who may be captivated by a mix of wild multipliers, repeat Mystery symbols in free spins, and solid stats.
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