Magician’s Secrets

Theme and Design

Awesome Magical Production and Atmosphere

Magician’s Secrets builds its magical atmosphere in style and if you like magic-themed games I think you will enjoy this one. The game takes place in the magician’s lair, an old fashioned library with rows of dusty spell books and potion bottles, and a starry night sky visible through a glass-domed ceiling. A white-bearded old wizard hosts the show and the magical atmosphere is enhanced by theatrical music with chimes, dramatic chords and whooshing noises as the reels spin and lock in place.

There are plenty of nice animated visuals too when wilds expand or the free spins round drops. In short, Pragmatic Play have done a top job here and are deserving of full marks!

RTP and Variance

Like many Pragmatic Play slots, Magician’s Secrets has more than one RTP setting. I have seen the game running at 96.51% and 94.49% at various UK casinos and slot sites. There are usually 2 or 3 more lower settings too. Though you won’t notice the difference between 96.51% and 94.49% when you spin, it’s always better to play at a higher RTP if you can. I checked 5 popular sites and this is what I found:

• MrQ (independent): 96.51%
• Vegasland (Aspire Global): 94.49%
• Casumo (independent): 94.49%
• BacanaPlay (Skill on Net): 94.49%
• Pub Casino (L and L Europe): 94.49%

I would recommend MrQ from this sample as it is the only one to run at the optimum RTP.

Magician’s Secret is also a high variance slot, rated 5/5 on Pragmatic Play’s own volatility scale. So it will have an unpredictable payout distribution. You’ll find many similar games in Pragmatic’s catalogue including slots like Panda Fortune 2 and Cash Elevator, both or which are very volatile.

Maximum Win

The maximum payout in this game is 5,000x. That is a little under average for this provider whose high variance games often pay out as much as 10,000x or more in one spin. If you want higher potential then you could try Eye of the Storm (10,000x) or Power of Merlin Megaways (40,000x). Or read our article on Pragmatic’s highest maximum win slots.

Symbols and Paytable

Great Value In The Premiums And Multipliers Still To Come!

Magician’s Secrets is a straight-forward 6 reel and 4 row slot with a Win Ways game engine. That means wins are triggered by landing 3 or more identical symbols on adjacent reels from left to right, regardless of their row.

That creates the classic 4,096 paylines that is very popular configuration found in slots like Pink Elephants by Thunderkick and The Final Countdown by Big Time Gaming.

What I particularly like here is that the paytable holds good value, especially when you consider that there are plenty of multipliers to trigger that can enhance your wins still further.

The low payers are the 4 card suits and the crest emblem. These are valued at from 0.1x for 3 diamonds up to 0.8x for 6 crests. The premiums are the wizards tool’s like potion bottles, knives, goblets and spell book. These are valued at from 0.3x for 3 potion bottles up to 50x for 6 spell books.

There is also a Wild in this game that can expand and come with multipliers, landing on reels 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 only.

Features and Gameplay

Superb Bonus Round With Two Configurations To Choose From

There is nothing spectacular about the choice of features for Magician’s Secrets – expanding wilds, free spins and multipliers. But it’s been nicely executed and the configuration of the TWO free spins round makes it feel like it has the potential to pop at any time.

Randomly Expanding Wilds With Multipliers

Firstly, the wild will randomly expand when it lands. When it does, it will carry with it a multiplier of between 2x and 10x. That’s a nice start, and any win that passes through the wild will take on that multiplier.

Choose Between Two Free Spins Rounds

I’m always a fan of games that give you a choice of free spins configurations, so Magician’s Secrets gets kudos for this. To trigger either you will need to land 3 or more Crystal Ball Scatters.

There are two feature options:

Expanding Wilds Free Spins

There is a lot to love here! Firstly, you start with 10 spins and in this version any wild that lands on reels 3 and 4 is GUARANTEED to expand AND triggers a re-spin. If you get a win from the re-spin then you get another re-spin, and so on.

But the best part is that a 1x multiplier is added to the expanded wild at the start, and with each new re-spin it increases by a further 1x.  All wins including that wild have the multiplier applied to them before pay out. You can also land two expanded wilds, both with multipliers, that combine if they are both involved in a win during this feature.

And finally, you can re-trigger the free spins by landing 3 more scatters. And there is no limit to how many times that can happen.

Sticky Wilds Free Spins

The second version of the free spins is with Sticky Wilds. Now, you only get 8 free spins, but before the round starts a random pay symbol is chosen and when it lands on reels 2 to 4 then it transforms into a Sticky Wild. And stays in position until the round ends.

Not only that, ALL other wilds are also sticky for the round.

And to finish, if you fill a reel with sticky wilds from top to bottom, then a further 3 spins are awarded.