Coins of Alkemor Slot – Free Demo

Three Reels and a Wizard on the Middle One

Just when I assumed these confined small Hold & Win slots couldn't get any worse, I'm smacked in the face by yet another one. The respin round is the only feature in the game. The once so powerful Betsoft insists on reducing its own back library down to three reels and attaching a collect-and-respin phase onto it. Wins are read left to right, and the highest combination on a line is the one paid. They are the makers of superb classics such as Alkemor's Tower and The Slotfather. Bonus symbols do not pay anything at all in the base game. The results so far have been so catastrophic that I'm beginning to wonder if it's some sort of internal training drill. Of the 350 spins I played, 62 returned a win, and 32 of those paid back less than the stake. It involves passing the old characters to coders who know absolutely nothing about online slots. The balance ended at 938.59 from a start of 1,000.00. If so, that's really neat, but the slots are still dreadful, and there's no path around it.

Coins of Alkemor - Hold & Win is a Betsoft powered slot launched on July 11, 2024. My own run covered 350 spins at a stake of 1.25 a spin.

This 3-reel, 3-row slot takes wagers starting at 0.20 credits. Wins landing on more than one payline at the same time are added together. It comes with 5 fixed pay lines, and the theoretical return to player is listed at 96.18%. Wagering 437.50 over the session returned 376.09. But there is no detail whatsoever about it anywhere in the game's own paytable, and no volatility grade either. The lowest my balance dropped to was 719.32. This is frequently a red flag, and as a direct consequence it will end in the loss of points in my final judgement. The longest stretch without any win ran to 15 spins and ended on spin 191.

The graphics are far from lavish in appearance. They pay tribute to the classic Betsoft look.

What the Nine Symbols Actually Return

Coins of Alkemor comes with a lineup of 9 regular symbols. The Bonus and Wizard Bonus symbols sit outside that count and pay nothing on their own. It includes four coloured gems as the low-value symbols, as well as the cauldron, the scroll, the scales and the green crystals. The scales pay 3 times the stake for three of a kind, and the scroll 2 times. The crystals are of top value below the wild, granting you a return of 5 times the stake for 3 of a kind. The cauldron sits below them at 1.6 times the stake, and the four gems run from 1 times down to 0.2 times. The Wild orb, however, is the most lucrative one, and three of them on a line is worth 10 times the stake. No line combination in the base game pays more than that. It shows up on all reels just like the paying symbols, substituting for everything except the Bonus and Wizard Bonus symbols. That means a wild can never help start the feature, which needs the Bonus symbols themselves.

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Three Respins and a Coin That Collects

The Hold & Win feature will come into play should you land three or more scattered Bonus symbols, with at least one Wizard Bonus among them. Bonus symbols only land on reels 1 and 3, and the Wizard Bonus only on reel 2. During the feature, the Wizard Bonus symbols lock in place and collect the value of every Bonus symbol on the reels. The round opens with three respins, and each new Wizard Bonus symbol sets the count back to three. After that, the collected symbols are cleared and the three respins reset, and two Wizard Bonus symbols on screen collect the values twice. The whole round is played at the stake of the spin that triggered it. During my test, I could determine that it was awfully difficult to land the thing at all. The first came on spin 304 and the second on spin 347. Two rounds in 350 spins, the second of them 43 spins after the first, and regrettably the payouts are dismal and will not pay more than 13 times the stake outside of the bonus. Both triggers fell in the last 50 spins of the run.

The rewards come in the form of coin values, and the Bonus symbols carry cash values ranging from 1 to 15 times the stake. The value a Bonus symbol carries scales with the bet the round was triggered at. Above the grid sit four fixed awards - Mini, Minor, Major and Grand. The Wizard Bonus collects those four the same way it collects the plain prize values. They are worth 25, 50, 150 and 1,000 times the stake respectively. With two Wizard Bonus symbols on screen, a Grand would be collected twice. Standard symbol wins do not pay during the round. Wizard Bonus symbols have no prize of their own and only collect what lands after them. Everything collected is paid out only when the respins run out. My two rounds finished on 42.50 and 213.75.

The Minty Breakdown: Outside the two respin rounds, nothing in 350 spins paid more than 13 times the stake, and the wild's own three of a kind tops the paytable at 10 times. A three-reel cabinet with a 1,000 times the stake Grand hanging over it spends most of its time not being that game.

Where the 86% Went

Coins of Alkemor, regrettably, lacks novelty, ambition, and most importantly, decent win potential. The best spin outside the feature in 350 tries was worth 13 times the stake, on spin 122. The payouts in the main game are startlingly low, and the bonus game doesn't do much to make up for it. My two rounds delivered 34x and 171x the stake, and the session finished at 86% of what went in, nowhere near the 3,691x the slot promotes. Those two rounds accounted for 256.25 of the 376.09 the session returned. Even in the ever-shifting landscape of iGaming, there will probably always be room for old-style three-reel type slots. Spin 347 was the only one of the 350 to return more than 100 times the stake. But something that will never change is the gravitational pull and magic of slots capable of dishing out super mega wins. Betsoft seems to have underestimated that here.