What’s Up Witches

What's Up Witches: Slot Overview

Back in the day, being labelled a witch was about the worst thing that could happen to a self-respecting woman, potentially leading to ducking, the rack, or worse. These days, being called a witch isn't exactly a term of endearment, but it has a certain 'cool' connotation to it, as if magic is now more of an appealing trait than a sign of darkness. Never so much as in NetEnt's What's Up Witches, an online slot that makes you wish you had 'the power' as it swans about casting spells throughout its base game and a hold 'n' spin bonus.

Vibe-wise, What's Up Witches has a sort of Sabrina the Teenage Witch/The Craft thing going on paired with quite an impressive soundtrack. Drilling deeper into the theme, we come across three young ladies named Isadora, Sage, and Sabrina, huh go figure, who juggle university with pushing back the Great Darkness, which is hellbent on consuming their city. Sounds exhausting enough, even before factoring in that the ladies need to 'look cute enough to post on their stories.' On screen, willing players get a Hogwarts for adults type experience, with loads of candles, magic, spellcasting, and funkin' toons to look forward to.

What's Up Witches' gaming area is a 6-reel grid, where symbols land in a 4-6-6-6-6-4 pattern, and the bottom row spins horizontally. This set-up provides 20,736 ways to win, from the leftmost reel onwards. Each win starts an Avalanche sequence, which causes winning symbols to vanish and new symbols to slide in to replace them. Avalanches continue until no new win appears. Statistically, What's Up Witches is highly volatile with three RTP configurations topping out at 96.03%. As well as Elevate feature buys, the base stake options range from $/€0.20 to $/€100.

Starting from the bottom up, What's Up Witches' pay symbols are three stone symbols, three pieces of jewellery, and three witches. A winning combination of 6 matching witches pays 2.5x to 5x the bet, while the rest of the pay symbols award 0.6x to 2x the bet for 6 OAK. Wild symbols substitute for all of the pay table symbols, and have the same payout value as the most valuable lady.

What's Up Witches: Slot Features

Open What's Up Witches' spellbook to find a host of Arcane features, a free spins bonus round, and feature buys.

Arcane Features

The arcane feature has 9 spells, and up to 3 of them can appear on the reels during a spin. Spells can be activated when a grimoire symbol appears on the horizontal row. This could be the regular grimoire or the super grimoire. The standard version only activates spells on the adjacent reel to its position. Spells within the affected area of an activated spell are activated, causing a chain reaction. Super grimoires activate all spells on the reels. When spells are activated, they transform into wilds along with symbols in their affected area, except scatters and the horizontal reel.

• Simple Spell - Transforms into a wild.
• Vertical Spell - Transforms itself and adjacent symbols above and below it into wilds.
• Horizontal Spell - Same as the vertical spell but left and right.
• Plus Pattern Spell - Transforms itself and adjacent symbols above, below, left, and right of it into wilds.
• Downward Spell - Transforms itself and all symbols below it into wilds.
• Upward Spell - Transforms itself and all symbols above it into wilds.
• Omni-directional Spell - Transforms itself and all adjacent symbols into wilds.
• Rightmost Spell - Transforms itself and all symbols to the right of it into wilds.
• Leftmost Spell - Transforms itself and all symbols to the left of it into wilds.

Wilds affected by an activated spell gain a +1 multiplier up to x3. When more than one multiplier wild participates in the same win, their multiplier values are multiplied.

Free Spins

When 4 or 5 scatters are in view, players win 10 or 15 free spins, respectively. Free spins are played on a 5x5 grid that can land blanks or bet multipliers of x1 to x100, which are sticky. Next to the grid is a Magic Orb which has 9 features that can randomly activate on any free spin.

• Doubler - Randomly doubles 3 multipliers.
• Collector - Collects 2 to 6 multipliers.
• Upgrader - Random upgrades 3 multipliers by 1.
• Compressor - Adds the multipliers in a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line, removes them, then places the sum in the last position of the line.
• Adder - Adds a random value of x5 to x200 to 3 multipliers.
• Generator - Places 3 multipliers worth x1 to x500 on the grid.
• Convertor - Selects a multiplier from reels and rows 2-4, checks the top, bottom, left, and right position of the multiplier for the highest value, then converts the 5 positions to that value.
• Sweeper - Collects and removes all x1 multipliers.
• +3 Spins - Awards 3 more spins.

Elevate Feature Buys

Features may be bought from the Elevate menu. They include the Bonus Hunt for 3x to increase the chance of triggering free spins, Arcane for 10x to activate the Arcane feature, or an immediate free spins trigger costing 100x the bet. Arcane + Free Spins costs 300x to trigger the Arcane feature, followed by 10 or 15 free spins, or Arcane + Free Spins Maximum costs 500x to trigger the Arcane feature, followed by 15 free spins.

What's Up Witches: Slot Verdict

Have to say that What's Up Witches turned out to be a whole lot better than first anticipated. The first impressions were of a cheesy teen sitcom-type game, one which talks up the magic but fizzles out when it comes time to dazzle. Happy to report that What's Up Witches' spells can actually be quite powerful when they step up. So, while the 'Sabrina-meets-Insta' initially triggered a few eye-rolls, the gameplay actually managed to silence some of the doubts. Not all of them, but What's Up Witches' high level of strut, evoked through things like its three take-no-nonsense heroines, and bouncing base game tune, made it likeable.

Spells are a critical part of the puzzle in both the base and bonus games. In the main game, they're focused on adding wild symbols to the gaming grid, which isn't frighteningly original, yet their wide range of directional abilities, chain reacting, and the large number of ways to win mean they might conjure up a solid cantrip if you're lucky. That phase of play was less enchanting than the bonus round, which is in some ways a quite basic, cross your fingers and land bet multiplier symbols experience, but one that is also expanded on through, again, a long list of spells.

One or two fruitful results brightened the experience, and should What's Up Witches reach its final form, it can deal out wins up to 10,180x the bet. The glossy production values, top notch soundtrack and overall sass made it a better game than anticipated, but it won't be for all. However, if you like the idea of chain-reacting wilds on a 20K+ ways grid and using magic to add zip to a hold 'n' spin round, then the three young sorceresses have more than just cute viral stories to offer in a game that showcases a playfully hip side of NetEnt.