Witches Wealth Slots
Witches Wealth is a wonderfully well-designed video slot released by Isle of Man-based software developer Microgaming. The instant-play slot, which gamers can find at a brace of Microgaming-powered online casinos, features 5 reels, 9 unfixed paylines and no end of entertaining symbols associated with witchcraft. There’s also a max pay-out of 6,000 coins to shoot for.
Witches get a bad rep – they’re invariably portrayed as bitter, wicked and scheming – but in Witches Wealth, the witch, who goes by the name of Serena, isn’t like that at all. In fact, the more Serena appears on the reels, the better for the gamer, as our bespectacled witch grants the highest pay-outs in the game.
Witch’s brew
The great thing about Witches Wealth is that all of the symbols involved are related to the theme. There’s an owl, a bat, a jar of eyes, a few spell books, a gargoyle-esque cat, jars of potions, a diamond-studded goblet and a witch. The illustrations are excellent, with the attention to detail in the potion jars particularly noteworthy. Among the regular symbols, the owl is the best-paying: it grants 2,000 for five, 200 for four and 50 for three. The pay-offs drop thereafter, though: for five spell books it’s just 300, for five potions 250… Take a look at the pay-table for a detailed breakdown of the values associated with all matching combinations.
As for the waging particulars, coin denominations start at 0.01 and go right up to 0.25, and you can play up to 20 coins per line. Players can choose to play between one and nine lines, and the maximum bet-per-line is 45. All wins pay left to right except scatters, which pay any.
Spellbinding special symbols
Serena the witch is the game’s wild, and as such, she can substitute for other symbols to help you for wins. She can even stand in for the scatter, which should really help, although she cannot, alas, replace Mr Twinkles the cat. Serena is also linked with some extremely generous sums in the pay-table, including five for two, 100 for three, 1,000 for four and 6,000 for five-in-a-line. Because Serena can stand in for other symbols, hitting five in a row is doubly lucrative: you’ll receive 6,000, yes, but you’ll also be paid out for five scatter bat symbols, thereby granting you an extra 50 credits.
The Witches Wealth scatter is the bat, and it grants a pay-out if you can find three or more anywhere on the reels. Scatter wins, of course, are calculated by multiplying the scatter symbol combination pay-out by the total number of regular coins bet. The scatter pays two credits for three matching, a dozen for four and 50 for five.
The last special icon is Mr Twinkles, a green-eyed but otherwise blue cat. Three or four Mr Twinkles symbols displayed on an enabled line activates the Spinning Wand bonus game, in which you can win up to 1,600 coins or activate yet another bonus, the Flying Rescue bonus! In the Spinning Wand game, you’ll see six segments of a wheel, with a wand spinning in the middle. You’ll also hear a woman rattle off a rhyme: “Round and round the spinning goes, where it will stop, nobody knows.” Five segments contain random bonus win amounts, while the sixth activates the Flying Rescue bonus.
If you’re lucky enough to make it through to the Flying Rescue bonus, you’ll watch as the witch attempts to rescue Mr Twinkles while avoiding objects falling from the sky – bikes, plant pots, chairs, even cows! The graphics are particularly strong here, as the witch flits across the moonlit sky, against the backdrop of a darkened city skyline. If she fails in her rescue bid, you’ll still win a random bonus prize, but if she successfully saves the cat, your prize will be doubled. If Serena can manage to bring the cat home, the prize is trebled. You could win as much as 9,000!
There’s also another way of gaining entry to the bonus game, and that’s by finding five Mr Twinkles symbols on an active line. This is pretty rare, though.
The best witch
Witches Wealth is one of the best witch-themed slots out there. Not only can the wild icon stand in for the scatter, but there is a third special symbol, which is linked to two separate bonus games! Some more interactivity in the bonus games would’ve been nice, but overall, this is a highly recommendable slot.
