The Watcher

The Watcher: Slot Overview

Surely, selling one's soul for a single lifetime of mundane three-dimensional success has got to be the very definition of short-term thinking. A lifetime, let's say 100 full years or so is nothing compared to an eternity of being pitchforked by nefarious entities. Yet still, in fiction, at least, there are any number of individuals willing to perform arcane rituals, whether for personal benefit or to push the boundaries of human knowledge. Forbidden terror is the vibe in Stakelogic's other-worldly slot, The Watcher. In this slot, one key goal is to bring a multi-eyed, black octopus kinda creature onto the game board, which acts as a shifting, amorphous wild potentially boosted by multiplier powers.

According to the game blurb, The Watcher takes place in a quiet village where an ancient evil known as The Watcher has awakened after slumbering for centuries. The Watcher has possessed a young woman and used her to enter an abandoned church, where two priests armed with faith and relics stand ready to face the evil. Quite a nice church it is, too, where stained glass windows are displayed on either side of a 6-reel, 6-row gaming grid. In appearance, The Watcher echoes the likes of Nolimit City's Possessed or Play'n GO's Tome of Madness/Tome of Insanity slots, games where ritual, magic, good, evil, and the damned converge in one fouled, anathematised spot.

The Watcher's gaming grid has 40 paylines running along it, paying left to right from the leftmost reel and right to left from the rightmost reel. According to the game maker's 5 out of 5 rating, The Watcher is a highly volatile slot, with an RTP topping out at 96.01%. Base bets of 20 c to $/€100 may be selected, and by activating the Super Stake ante bet (which increases the stake by 25%), players can increase their chance of triggering free spins by getting more scatters on the reels.

Eleven pay symbols make their way onto The Watcher's board. There are 5 ritualistic patterns on the lower side, then a ring, a book, a bell, and 3 character symbols on the higher side. Patterns pay 0.4 to 1 times the bet for a 5 OAK winning combination, while the rest are worth 1.5 to 12.5 times the bet for 5 in a line. Wild symbols may appear in the base game in any shape or amount after the reels have landed. Wild symbols are available on all reels and substitute for anything except scatter symbols. When making wild only wins, they have the same value as the highest regular paying symbol.

The Watcher: Slot Features

The Watcher's main feature is its free spins bonus round. To get into it requires having at least 3 scatter symbols in view. Players collect 6, 8, 10, or 20 free spins for hitting 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols, respectively.

A wild symbol appears in the bonus round in a size of 1x1 and roams to a new position on each spin until the feature ends. For each blue scatter that lands on a free spin, the win multiplier increases. For each pink scatter that lands, the wild blob increases in size. The shape of the wild can be different when roaming about following free spins. Also, the wild's size and the multiplier do not reset for the duration of free spins. For each 5 bonus symbols that land (not necessarily at the same time), +1 free spin is awarded.

Mystery Multiplier

The Mystery Multiplier is applied to all wins on the reels when it is active, and it randomly appears in the base game. During free spins, the multiplier is persistently progressive.

Feature Buy

The Watcher's free spins feature may be bought from the base game at a cost of 100 times the current base bet.

The Watcher: Slot Verdict

Wilds that roam are fairly common in this day and age in the online slot sphere. Around the time of The Watcher's review, Hacksaw Gaming summoned their powers in Get The Cheese, as did Bullshark Games in its slot Amazing Miceketeers, to name two, which employed the services of roaming wilds with a multiplier in there somewhere. Quite clever, then, that Stakelogic has used the feature in a relatively new and exciting way. They have done this via a Call of Cthulhu-style presentation. Giving the wild tentacles and eyes makes it feel almost alive as it changes shape, appearing in different parts of the board, like a malevolent octopus from another dimension which has no business here in the three-dimensional realm we humans reside in, ignorantly unaware of the horrors squirming on the other side of the veil, lusting to break through and cause havoc.

Luckily, we don't usually have to experience true horrors, but through the imagination and games like The Watcher, we can pretend we're doing so. Stakelogic has set up an enjoyably bizarre game world and has wound up a decent set of features to go with it. At times, there may seem like there's a mismatch between the number of pay symbols, the size of the matrix, and the number of paylines, but again, it's the magic of the wild, undulating blob which helps counteract that. Well, it has the potential to counteract any perceived imbalance if it grows to a helpful size and pulsates alongside a useful multiplier. At full undulation, The Watcher can knock off wins up to a cap of 9,000 times the stake. And so, despite being a little clunky around the edges at times, The Watcher is an entertaining slot that squares off priests with a frightful horror while using the horror to potentially great effect on the actual game board to trigger little or big adrenal rushes for lucky players.