Wizard's Critters

21 August 2022

By John Grochowski

QUESTION: I play online quite a bit. I live in New Jersey, so I can play for money.
I tried out a slot game called Wizard's Critters, and it seemed like the longer I played, the bigger the wins got. I don't think I was winning any more often, but the payoffs seemed to be for more coins.

Is that possible? Is this a game that needs to be primed with early play before the big wins can happen?

ANSWER: It is possible you were getting bigger wins later in a session, but it's not a matter of priming the game. It happens because as you play, you turn some dragon symbols into two, three and four dragon symbols.

Wizard's Critters is from High Five Games, which pioneered split symbols in games such as Shadow of the Panther and Brasilia. To use Shadow of the Panther as an example, some big cat symbols have two images of the same fierce feline instead of one. If you line up two single panthers and one space with two panthers, you have four in a row instead of three.

Wizard's Critters combines split symbols with a play mechanic called Spincrease.
Symbols include red, green and blue dragons. At the start of play, each dragon is a single symbol, but Spincrease enables you to increase so there are two, three or four like dragons in the same symbol.

To the left of the reels is a Spincrease meter that rises as you play. When you fill the meter the first time, it enables double blue dragons. The second time through the meter unlocks double greens, the third double reds, and then you start the process again to unlock triple symbols. Finally, if you're able to stick with Wizard's Critters long enough, you get a change to unlock the quadruple dragons.

If you've played enough to earn four-dragon symbols, then it's possible to line up not just five, but 20 of a kind on a payline for some truly enchanted payoffs.
So yes, playing longer does unlock the potential for bigger wins and you may well have been seeing enhanced returns later in your session.

QUESTION: If your chances of drawing a royal flush in video poker are around 1 in 40,000, why is the payoff for a five-coin bet only 4,000? Wouldn't equal be more like 40,000 coins paid per coin bet, or 200,000 for five coins.

I get the casino needs to make a profit, but wouldn't it be more fair to pay 190,000 or so?

ANSWER: Your wagers fund not only payoffs on royal flushes, but pays on high pairs, two pairs, three of a kind and so on up the poker ranks. If a game paid anywhere close to true odds on a royal, there would be nothing left to pay four of a kind, full houses or other winners.

Anything but a royal would be a losing hand. If you could afford it, you could play for hours and hours without ever seeing a winning hand.

Player strategy would shift dramatically. There would be no point in holding cards that couldn't lead to a royal. If you were dealt Aces of clubs, spades and diamonds and 10s of spades and hearts, you'd hold Ace-10 of spades, hit draw and hope for a miracle.

That strategy shift would increase the frequency of royals to about 1 in 23,080. A payoff would have to be less than 115,400 coins to give the house a profit.

No one would play a game like that. We need the smaller payoffs to keep us going.