Sorry Twihards, but Twilight Princess from developer Pragmatic Play is not a playful reference to Bella Swan, but is instead a distant relative of Starlight Princess, a slot sharing similar traits and a number of different ones, which in turn is heavily inspired by Play'n GO's smash hit classic Moon Princess (there currently also seems to be a war going on between the two, both releasing 100 vs 1000 versions of these slots). What sets the two games apart is that Twilight Princess is not a Gates of Olympus reskin but offers gameplay which is newer and less recycled than Starlight Princess. However, on the front end, fans of manga or anime get another chance to dip themselves into a dreamy cartoon world hosted by a leggy femme character who spends much of the time jiggling.
The setting for Twilight Princess isn't overly special, though. The aforementioned cartoon heroine hovers to the side of a gaming grid in a cloudy location, way up in the atmosphere somewhere. Admittedly, if games like Starlight Princess or Moon Princess appealed, then Twilight Princess probably will, too, though it is a little plain to look at. When free spins trigger, the lighting dims to reflect the twilight aspect, gold sun touching the background clouds. It's okay to look at without being special, and during the demo, perhaps this will be altered when the game goes live, the game's twangy Western sound was completely out of place.
Where Starlight Princess used a scatter pays system to award wins, Twilight Princess is a grid slot where a win is constituted by at least 5 matching symbols landing in blocks, connected either horizontally or vertically. Twilight Princess does not have a tumble feature, either. What it has is a highly volatile math model (getting a 5 out of 5 rating) producing a default RTP of 96.08% or 96.01% when buying free spins. Players may select a stake of 20 p/c to $/€240 per spin, and the gaming is held on a 5x5 sized grid.
Residing on the lower side of the paytable are circle, triangle, diamond, hexagon, and heart-shaped items, while the high pays are a shield-type thing, a flower, a bell, a crown, and a princess. Landing winning blocks consisting of 5 matching symbols pays 0.25 to 2.5 times the bet, rising to 7.5 to 50 times the bet for hitting a 20+ sized winning block.
Twilight Princess does that thing where it drops a feature in the base game, in this case, wilds with multipliers, then reuses them again in free spins with an augmented ability. There's also a buy free spins feature for players keen on quicker access to the bonus round.
The wild symbol is an elaborate pink orb with a 'W' imprinted on it. The first thing wilds can do is substitute for any symbol except the scatter. When wilds hit, they land with a multiplier of x2, x3, x5, or x10, which applies to any win the wild is part of. When more than 1 wild is part of the same win, the multiplier values are added to each other. One wild can be part of more than one winning block at the same time, and a full screen of wilds pays 50 times the bet.
The golden orb object is Twilight Princess' scatter, and it lands on all reels. Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols awards a payout of 2x, 15x, or 100x the bet, respectively, as well as 10 free spins. During free spins, any wild symbol that appears on the screen remains on the reels until the free spins round ends. Scatters may land in free spins as well, overlaid on top of any symbol. Getting 2, 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols awards an extra 5, 10, 20, or 30 free spins.
Free spins can be instantly triggered from the base game by buying them for 100 times the bet. When buying free spins, 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols are guaranteed to land on the triggering spin.
Even though it might be argued Twilight Princess has more originality going on, mechanically speaking, than Starlight Princess, it doesn't feel like this is a game that had a whole lot of love lavished on it. The background is pretty plain, bordering on dull, and apart from the floating princess and some of the symbols, Twilight Princess didn't feel like a game which took the manga, anime concept and really went to town with it. Maybe if/when Pragmatic Play drops in a more appropriate soundtrack, this might help beef up the experience. As mentioned, there is a princess and an assortment of related symbols, but the theme use felt a little half-hearted when compared to some of the other slots in this category.
The same might be said about Twilight Princess' features, which revolve around a wild multiplier that becomes sticky in free spins. Pretty basic, a little unimaginative, but darn it, the features have the technical capability to thrill. In the base game, wild multipliers land from time to time to get the pulse racing a bit harder, yet the base game didn't hold a candle to free spins where wilds are sticky when they appear on the reels, blasted by the Twilight Princess' magic staff. It didn't prove to be too difficult to get a number of sticky wilds on the board either, potentially leading to decent results. A tumble feature might have pushed things even further, but even without one, Twilight Princess can produce wins up to a cap of 7,500x the bet.
Fans of sticky multiplier wild features will likely find a level of satisfaction from Twilight Princess, as will fans of anime/manga, even though it's not a game which really squeezes as much juice from the subject matter as possible. It's also not a game that really has its foot on the innovation gas. However, Twilight Princess does enough to scrape by, dressing up a satisfying set of features in a Sailor Moon-type outer coating.
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