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If there’s one thing you need to know about Mystic Reels, it’s this: all the real action, and the real money, is hiding in the free spins round.
Created by Bulletproof Games and published by BGaming, this is a standard 5×3 slot with 20 paylines. It boasts a solid 96.00% Return to Player (RTP) and a maximum win of 4,558.7x your bet. But what makes it unique is what’s missing: there are no scatter symbols. Instead, you have to rely on a chain reaction of wins to unlock the bonus.
Here is how the game actually plays, and why the base game is really just a waiting room for the main event.
The Trail: Why Triggering the Bonus is Tough
Because there are no scatter symbols to trigger the bonus, Mystic Reels uses a “cascade” system. Whenever you get a winning combination, those symbols pop and disappear, allowing new ones to drop down.
Every time you get a pop, you move one step along a stone trail at the bottom of the screen. If you string enough wins together on a single spin, you hit the free spins milestones (7, 10, 12, 18, or 25 free spins).
Here’s the catch: the trail resets at the start of every single spin. You can’t slowly build up your progress over time. You need three consecutive winning drops on one spin just to reach the first free spins stone. In our test, it was pretty common to spin several times, win nothing, and watch the trail sit completely still.
The “Encore” Feature: Paying Extra for a Better Chance
If you look at the menu, you’ll see an option for “Encore.” Be careful here, this isn’t a one-time bonus buy. It’s an ante bet.
If you turn Encore on, it increases your bet size by 50% on every spin (for example, a $1 bet becomes $1.50). What you get in return is a safety net. If your winning streak stops just one or two steps short of triggering the free spins, the game gives you a respin without resetting your progress on the trail. The game claims this more than doubles your chances of hitting the bonus, which makes sense, considering how hard it is to start from zero every time.
The Free Spins: Where the Big Money Hides
If the base game is a bit of a grind, the free spins round is where Mystic Reels shines.
During the bonus, each of the five reels gets its own multiplier, starting at 1x. Every time a Wild symbol lands on a reel, that reel’s multiplier goes up (capping at 5x). If you get a winning line that crosses multiple multipliers, they multiply against each other. Best of all? These multipliers never reset during the bonus round. The longer the round goes, the bigger your wins get.
Because getting to the bonus naturally is so hard, we decided to use the “Buy Bonus” feature. It costs a flat 100x your bet. We bought in for $100 (on a $1 base bet). The game started us on the 10 Free Spins stone, we managed to trigger a few extra spins, and thanks to those sticky multipliers, we walked away with a very nice $338.50 payout.
Looks and Payouts: Pretty, but Low-Paying Gems
Visually, the game is nice, if a bit generic. The symbols are all shiny gemstones and crystals set against a magical, vine-wrapped stone frame. It looks good, but there’s no real story or character to it.
The paytable also reveals the game’s biggest flaw. The payouts in the base game are incredibly low. The absolute best five-of-a-kind combination only pays 25x your bet, and the lowest pays just 7x. Because there are no multipliers in the base game, it is mathematically impossible to get anywhere near that 4,558.7x maximum unless you are in the free spins round.
Final Verdict
Mystic Reels is essentially a delivery system for its free spins feature. The base game can feel a bit unrewarding since the payouts are low and the bonus trail wipes clean on every spin.
However, the free spins round is genuinely fantastic. The growing multipliers that never reset make the bonus incredibly exciting and full of potential. If you have the bankroll for it, the best way to enjoy this game is to skip the grind and use the 100x Bonus Buy feature. That’s where the true magic of Mystic Reels actually happens.