Ocean Magic Slot – Free Demo

Bubbles that climb a row at a time

So what is this slot then, anything fresh available aside from a fresh theme? It is an IGT game built around bubbles that climb the grid one row at a time. The initial impression produced mixed feelings for certain, and graphically it is an underwater setting. The Golden Horn is the source of the extra bubbles that the side bet pays for. Bubbles float up from beneath the reels, and a Golden Horn rests off to the side.

Ocean Magic is a 5-reel, 4-row slot with 50 fixed paylines, paying left to right from the leftmost reel, and it is played at 50 coins per spin at the selected coin value.

What the whale shark and the starfish pay

On the reels, the highest paying symbol is the Ocean Magic symbol itself, and 5 of them across a payline delivers 300 coins, and 250 coins with Bubble Boost enabled. Below it come the whale shark and the jellyfish, then the fish, the turtle and the seahorse, with three starfish in yellow, red and green at the bottom. There is also a wild. It substitutes for everything except the Bonus chest.

The Golden Horn and its seven extra bubbles

Next to the bet button you will notice a Bubble Boost button, and if enabled, the game is played with a raised bet size - an extra 50 coins. That doubles the coin cost of a spin, since the 50 fixed lines already account for 50 coins. The coin value is doubled. The trade is that the three starfish lose their three-of-a-kind pay while the boost is running. It comes into play by sending up to 7 additional bubbles from the Golden Horn onto random reel positions. Those extra bubbles then work exactly like the ones that rise from beneath the reels. These are never on the top or bottom position of a reel or where a bubble already rests.

A wild that moves up one position at a time

Fundamental to the game is the Wild Bubble feature, and bubbles rise one position per spin from beneath the reels. One or more of them can be sitting under a given reel when a spin starts. They turn the symbol they land on wild. Wins still have to run from the leftmost reel, so a wild only helps a line that has already started on reel 1. A bubble landing on an Ocean Magic symbol turns every neighboring position wild as well. When a bubble expands like that, only the original bubble carries on upward on the next spin. A bubble on a Bonus symbol goes wild, but it still counts toward the trigger, and bubbles disappear above the top row. Bonus wins are worked out separately and added to the payline wins rather than replacing them. Their positions remain per bet level.

Five picks, ten picks, twenty picks

3, 4 or 5 Bonus chests anywhere grant 5, 10 or 20 picks. The chests count anywhere on the grid rather than along a payline. Each picked bubble uncovers 2 additional picks, 3 additional picks, or 1 to 5 free spins, and the Free Spins Bonus then plays out what the picks granted at the triggering coin value, with a bubble under reel 1 and reel 5 at the outset. Which bubble you choose makes no difference to what it reveals. Three or more chests retrigger it and grant another Pick feature, up to 4 retriggers and a firm cap of 750 free spins per bonus. Reaching that ceiling would take the maximum picks and all four retriggers falling the right way. If it was on in the base game, Bubble Boost carries into the bonus.

Minty Slots Verdict: Three bonus rounds in 300 spins put 105.00 on a 300.00 outlay, and without them the session would have closed 99.20 down instead of 5.80 up. Ocean Magic pays its rent in the chests, and the bubbles between them mostly keep the balance flat.

Three hundred spins under water

Everything is as sleek as silk, and the game seems to be well balanced, at least during my test sessions. The balance finished at 1,005.80. 300 spins at a stake of 1.00 returned 305.80, or 101.9%, with 87 paying spins and three bonuses between them worth 105.00, a third of everything won. 49 of those paying spins gave back less than the stake. The best of them arrived on spin 125. The balance peaked at 1,060.70 there, the high point of the session. There, a retriggered bonus paid 64.00, 64 times the stake, against 0.70 from the base game on the same spin. The other two bonuses came 67 and 66 spins later and paid 21.00 and 20.00, neither of them retriggered. It's a light-hearted and soothing slot nonetheless, although gambling is sober business.

The longest run in my session was 12 spins without a win, and the balance never fell below 971.10. That run ended on spin 191, and the largest win without a bonus attached, 47.00 on spin 88, had come well before it. But as I have learned, there are all kinds of assorted players out there, and a lot of them will undoubtedly relish this slot, if not for the potential, at least for the amusing features and graceful scenery.