Merlin’s Magic Mirror Megaways

Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways: Slot Overview

Merlin the magician is one of online gambling's enduring characters, and the popular wizard has materialised in all manner of slots. He's been put to extensive use by Play'n GO, for example, in games like Merlin: Journey of Flame and Rise of Merlin, to name two, but is in high demand by other providers, as well. iSoftBet, for instance, is a studio which looks favourably on the famous wizard, having already released Power of Merlin Megaways, as well as the game under today's microscope, Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways - an upgrade on the 2019 release, Merlin's Magic Mirror.

Since Merlin is a wizard and all, players will no doubt be entering Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways expecting a world full of wondrous enchantment. That is pretty much what hits your senses once the game opens up. In fact, it brought back memories of other Megaways slots with fantastical bents, such as BTG's White Rabbit and Iron Dog Studio's Megaways Jack. Here, players inhabit an outdoor natural setting of mountains and trees for the base game, with a hint of civilisation provided by an arching stone bridge. Make it to the free spins segment of play, and Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways shifts into a cavern encrusted with crystals. Maybe this is where Merlin conducts esoteric arcana away from prying eyes.

Highly volatile, Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways is played on 6 reels with a horizontally spinning 4 position tracker reel on top. When including the top tracker, up to 7 symbols can appear on each reel, creating a maximum of 117,649 ways to win. As iSoftBet slots tend to do, this one takes bets of 20 c to $/€20 per spin, and it also has an optional Magic Bet. When activating the Magic Bet, the stake is increased by 25%, which 'triggers the feature more frequently'. When betting regularly, the default RTP is 95.98%, or slightly higher at 96% when using the Magic Bet.

The cascade system zaps winning symbols from the reels after they have combined to form a win. The gaps this creates are filled by symbols falling down on the main reels or from the side on the top reel. Cascades continue until no new win lands. Winning combinations pay when matching symbols land left to right, starting from the leftmost reel. Card ranks 9 to A are the low pays, worth 0.5x-1x the bet for a 6-of-a-kind hit, while the highs are a potion bottle, a book, an owl, and Merlin, paying 1.5 to 5 times the bet for 6 OAK. Wild symbols replace any regular pay symbol, so they are useful for helping link winning combinations together. They appear on reels 2 to 5, on the top reel and main game reels.

Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways: Slot Features

What Merlin can pull out of this particular hat is Merlins Magic Modifiers, free spins and an unlimited multiplier, plus bonus buys.

Merlins Magic Modifiers

At the start of any base game spin, Merlins Magic Modifiers may trigger. A magic mirror appears to reveal one of the following modifiers:

• Mystery Magic – a number of spaces are turned into the same mystery symbol. Mystery symbols reveal anything except wilds or scatters.
• Wizard Wilds – a random number of wilds are placed on reels 2 to 5.
• Super Spin – all positions on reel 1 and on the top tracker reel into the same symbol.
• Bonus – 3 or more scatter symbols will land on the reels.
• Max Megaways – all 117,649 ways to win spin in.

One more thing to look out for is Merlins lose to win, which may trigger randomly on any losing base game spin.

Free Spins

In the base game, landing 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters anywhere in view awards 8, 10, 12, or 14 free spins, respectively. For the free spins round, the triggering scatters convert to sticky mystery symbols and the number of Megaways is locked for the duration of the feature. More mystery symbols may be revealed at the start of any spin by Merlin. In addition, an unlimited multiplier is active in the round. It starts on x1 and increases by +1 after every cascading win. Free spins cannot be retrigged.

Bonus Buy

The bonus buy offers two options. One is a free spins trigger for 75 times the bet where the RTP is 96.29%, and the other is free spins with a minimum of 5,000 Megaways for 150x the bet where the RTP is 96.42%.

Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways: Slot Verdict

If Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways had the Wizard class in Dungeons & Dragons, it wouldn't exactly be a majorly high-level character with a game-changing proficiency bonus, but it certainly wouldn't be first-level either. Maybe somewhere in the middle, let's say, so while the game might not be able to drop a 9th-level Meteor Storm, it has progressed beyond popping mere cantrips as well. Anyway, enough jabbering in metaphors. Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways plays out rather well, in part because iSoftBet has accrued a significant amount of experience of crafting Megaways slots by now and has come up with a number of interesting extras to pad out gameplay. Many of them make their way into Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways and should be recognisable by those who have been following the studio's output.

As such, much, if not all, of the extras found here have worked their magic in previous slots, making Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways feel like a best-of episode rather than something groundbreaking. Because it's a follow-up to Merlin's Magic Mirror, some crossover has naturally occurred, such as turning losing spins into winning wins. Respins have been dropped, but the way scatters convert to sticky mystery symbols for free spins has remained. This time, though, an unlimited rising multiplier, a key Megaways feature, makes an appearance, which, when combined with a large minimum number of ways (if you're lucky) and sticky mystery symbols, is kinda neat.

Not like, super freaky neat, and much of the action in Merlin's Magic Mirror Megaways is standard iSoftBet stuff. But it's been tidily packaged together with a magically inspired bow placed on top to result in a competent Megaways upgrade supplying a sticky mystery symbol element, which is relatively unique for these sorts of games.