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A dark, witch-themed slot that ditches the standard grid for a circular board.
For the last couple of years, Pragmatic Play has been obsessed with putting “cluster pay” mechanics onto 7×7 grids filled with candy, sugar, and fruit. Coven Rising throws all of that out the window.
Instead of a bright rectangle, you’re looking at a flat, circular stone ritual disc set in a dark forest. There are 43 spaces for symbols, four hooded witches kneeling at the edges, and a Latin spell carved around the rim. To win, you just need five or more matching stones touching each other. But here’s the twist: every special feature in the game comes out of a single spot right in the dead center of the board.
The game has a 96.42% RTP (Return to Player), a max win of 5,000x your bet, and sits at a medium volatility level. It’s set to release on September 17, 2026.
Here’s how it actually feels to play.
A Circle Instead of a Grid
Because the board is circular, symbols can connect horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, giving you winning paths that a normal square grid just doesn’t have.
If you play a lot of cluster slots, you’re probably expecting a “tumble” (where winning symbols disappear and new ones fall down). That doesn’t happen here. When you win, the winning stones lock in place and respin. Nothing falls, nothing shifts.
The biggest headache in the game is the “blank” symbol, a bundle of crossed sticks. They have absolutely no value and just get in your way. And they land a lot. On one of our $2.00 base spins, roughly a third of the board was covered in useless sticks. Dealing with these blanks is the main tension of the game.
The Magic is in the Middle
Everything revolves around the dead center of the board. Four different Witch symbols can land in that middle spot (and only that spot). When one lands, she triggers a special ability for that spin:
- Green Witch: Collects all the coin symbols on the screen and pays you their total value.
- Red Witch: Upgrades a winning stone to make it worth more money.
- Yellow Witch: Turns those annoying blank sticks into real symbols.
- Blue Witch: Adds wild symbols to the board.
There are also “upgraded” versions of these witches that do the same things, but much better (like upgrading all stones, or clearing every blank). Because winning symbols trigger respins, the center stone can re-roll multiple times in a single turn. Chaining different witches together in one spin is easily the most fun part of the base game.
A quick note on the coins: You will see coins land constantly, with values ranging from 1x all the way up to 500x your bet. But here is the catch, they are completely worthless unless the Green Witch lands in the center to collect them. You will see a lot of spins where a massive 500x coin lands, only to sit there like a decorated blank because the Green Witch didn’t show up.
Symbol Levels (Why the Base Game Pays Low)
Payouts are a bit different here. Every stone has a level from 1 to 5. Your payout depends on how many stones are in your cluster and what level they are. The difference is huge: a basic white stone is worth pennies at level 1, but pays out handsomely at level 5.
The problem? In the normal base game, the Red Witch’s level upgrades reset as soon as your spin is over. Because of this, you’ll spend almost all your time in the base game playing with low-level, low-paying symbols.
Free Spins: Where the Real Money Hides
If you land three or more scatters, you trigger the Free Spins round (landing more scatters gets you up to 24 spins). This is where the game actually gets good, thanks to two rule changes:
- Upgrades are permanent: When the Red Witch upgrades symbol levels, they stay upgraded for the rest of the round. The board just keeps getting more valuable.
- The Snowball Coin: Instead of just collecting coins and disappearing, the Green Witch creates a “snowball.” After she collects the coins, all that value gets stuffed into one giant coin that stays on the board. Every time the Green Witch lands again, she collects the new coins plus the giant snowball coin, making it grow bigger and bigger.
We bought a standard Free Spins bonus for $200 (on a $2.00 bet). Thanks to retriggers, permanent upgrades, and a snowball coin that grew to 323x our bet, we walked away with $1,520.30.
Buying the Bonus & Betting Options
If you don’t want to wait, you can buy features:
- 100x your bet: Buys the standard Free Spins.
- 200x your bet: Buys “Super” Free Spins, which guarantees that blank stick symbols can never land in the center spot (meaning you’re much more likely to get a helpful Witch).
There’s a weird quirk with the math here: usually, buying a bonus lowers your RTP slightly. In Coven Rising, paying for features actually raises your RTP. The base game is 96.42%, but the buys and ante bets bump it up to around 96.50%.
You can also turn on an Ante Bet (which triples your stake but gives you a 7x higher chance of triggering free spins naturally). Warning: Turning on the Ante bet drops the game’s maximum win cap from 5,000x down to 1,667x.
How It Looks
Artistically, this is the best-looking, most serious game Pragmatic Play has made in a long time. It looks like a dark fantasy painting, complete with ram skulls, candles, and blue lightning.
However, it has a major legibility problem. In the base game, the level-1 stones are basically just dark pebbles on a dark background. It is genuinely hard to tell them apart without squinting. The game only becomes visually clear when stones upgrade to higher levels (they get bright metal and gold frames) or when you trigger Free Spins and the background shifts to a bright, fiery red. Essentially, the board only becomes easy to read at the exact moment you start winning real money.
Pros & Cons
What we loved:
- The circular board is a genuinely fresh layout, not just a lazy re-skin.
- The “snowball” coin mechanic in Free Spins is incredibly fun to watch as it grows.
- The art style is a massive step up from the studio’s usual cartoon graphics.
- You actually get a slightly better RTP when you buy the bonus features.
What frustrated us:
- Blank stick symbols take up way too much of the board.
- Seeing massive coins land but not getting paid for them (because the Green Witch didn’t land) gets annoying fast.
- Because upgrades reset in the base game, normal spins feel very unrewarding.
- A 5,000x max win is a bit low for a cluster game, and the Ante bet makes it even lower.
The Verdict
Coven Rising is a really cool experiment. The circular layout and center-stone mechanics are clever and totally unique compared to Pragmatic Play’s usual catalog.
That being said, the math is pretty cautious, and the base game is a bit of a slog. You will spend a lot of time staring at dark stones and dead sticks, waiting for something to happen. The true heart of this game is the Free Spins round, where the permanent upgrades and snowballing coins can lead to massive payouts (like our $1,500 win).
If you enjoy games where you collect and build up massive coin values, this is a great title. But honestly? You are probably better off just paying the 100x to buy the bonus round rather than sitting through the base game hoping for magic to strike.
