What’s not to love about a slot game featuring a mildly weird wizard and a variable number of pay lines? There’s quite a lot going on when you play White Wizard Deluxe, so make sure you read our in-depth review to ensure that you know what you’re getting yourself into before you press ‘Spin’.
Special Features
There are two main special features that can kick in at any time during your playing of White Wizard Deluxe. Here we’ll look at them both so you know how they work:
Wizard Wilds
It makes complete sense for a game named White Wizard Deluxe to have a Wizard symbol that does something. In this case that ‘something’ is that it will substitute in for any other symbol in the game, turning a potentially losing line into a winning one, with the exception of the Dragon Scatters. They can only land on reels one, three and five, just so you know.
The Wizarding fun doesn’t stop there, though. Firstly we should tell you that wins achieved with a Wizard Wild will pay out at three times the normal win rate, which is very nice indeed. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, the Wizard Wild symbol will expand out to cover all positions on the reel that it has landed on before any prizes are awarded. That means that you might be in line for an extra payout if additional winning lines are formed.
Dragon Scatter Free Spins
The Dragon Scatter will pay out of its own accord if you get enough of them to form a winning line, but it will also present you with the opportunity to get some Free Spins. The number of Dragon Scatters on your active pay lines will dictate how many Free Spins you get, with three resulting in fifteen of them, four seeing twenty Free Spins head your way and twenty-five Free Spins awarded for five Dragon Scatters.
Gamble Bonus
Just next to the ‘Auto Play’ button you’ll notice a button that’s faded out that says ‘Gamble’. If this lights up then you’ll be given the opportunity to gamble with the winnings of your last go in order to either double them or leave with nothing. You’ll see two potential options and you have to select the one that you think will show up when they’re revealed.
If you guess correctly then you’ll double your winnings and get to do so again. You’ll keep getting the chance to double what you’ve won until you’ve either won five times in succession, won more than £32,000, clicked the ‘Take Win’ button or guessed incorrectly.
Gameplay & RTP
We mentioned at the start of this review that there’s more going on with White Wizard Deluxe than first meets the eye. That’s because of the way that the makers have made the game, allowing you to change the number of lines you’re playing with by moving a dial on the righthand side of the screen. It automatically loads with all one-hundred lines selected, but given the minimum stake per line is 1p that means it’s £1 per spin and that might be a bit rich for those of you that have just popped in to see what the game is like. You can use the slider to move it to whatever level you want, saving you from repeatedly clicking the ‘Line Down’ button on the bottom of the screen if one-hundred is too many for you. Given that White Wizard Deluxe’s Return To Player average is 95.5%, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to feel that going big on the line numbers early on might be a risky strategy. Not that 95.5% is bad as an RTP average, of course. It’s better than a lot of games on the Virtue Fusion network that hover closer to the 94% mark, but there are definitely games that are higher out there for you to choose from.
Some of you will already know from the Return To Player average whether or not this is a game for you, but others will be interested to know about the gameplay. On that front White Wizard Deluxe is a little bit disappointing, to be honest. It’s not that it lacks special features, with both the expanding Wizard Wilds and the Dragon Scatter Free Spin Feature adding a bit of excitement and entertainment to the enterprise. It’s just that it feels a little cold and uninspiring. Perhaps that’s partially because it plays quite quickly, meaning that there’s not much build-up or tension as the reels spin and you see almost immediately whether or not you’ve won a prize. We’re not saying that we want to be constantly waiting for five minutes for all of the reels to land, but it would be nice if it didn’t feel as though the game is rather clinically waiting to take your money away if you don’t win. If you’re playing the maximum bet then you could tear through your money quite quickly and not really feel as though you’ve had much interaction with the game at all.
Given the Wizard theme, it should’ve been much easier to create a game that is a bit more exciting. Could the Wizard character, which towers over the lefthand side of the reels, not done something as the reels spin to make it seem as though there’s more to the whole thing than just whether or not you’re going to win a prize? He could’ve blown something over the reels to reveal the symbols, for example, or pulled a lever to get them going. Instead he’s just there, lending the game its name but not doing much more besides. The theme is fine generally, with the reels standing in front of a starry sky and the symbols featuring the likes of a Bubbling Cauldron, a Unicorn and a Magic Ball. Yet the 9, 10, J, Q, K and A symbols are just made up of colour rather than taking something from the theme. An old-English type font would been good to see here. It’s not the game isn’t good and the reels spin smoothly and land efficiently. It’s just that we wanted a bit more from it and felt as though the gameplay didn’t fo enough to make up for an RTP average that is decent without being spectacular.