The Wizard of Oz Munchkinland Slot – Free Demo

Two Munchkins Picked Before the Reels Turn

The small land at the end of the yellow brick road is the setting for Light & Wonder's Munchkin powered slot The Wizard of Oz Munchkinland, and it is Munchkin, since players get to sample the Munchkin Symbols mechanism. Line wins pay from the leftmost reel across adjacent reels. It imprints selected characters across the reel positions before the spin even begins. The upshot is a lot of on-screen activity. Symbols that cover several rows can pay and trigger features even when only part of them is in view. It never gets too overpowering, though, and The Wizard of Oz Munchkinland keeps a grip on all of those symbols, while generating some large figures in the process. So, Munchkinland is where the slot is situated. Well, the Oz of the 1939 movie with Dorothy, Toto and the basket, Glinda, the ruby Slippers and the Mayor of the Munchkin City.

The eye-catcher here is the grid ruling the screen. It is 5 reels and 6 rows in the base game, good for 50 lines, and during ordinary play that grid can yield 50 win lines. A win can land on any or all of the lines active at that height. But with the aid of the features the slot is capable of growing to 8 rows and 58 lines, or 10 rows and 66 lines. Only the highest combination on a line is paid.

Light & Wonder keeps things simple, mathematically, and in this specific instance RTP is 96.02%. Volatility is as low as they come, ranked 1 out of 5. Across 315 test spins the game gave back 69.7% of the money staked. There can be long delays between free spins. The longest run without a win in testing lasted 8 spins, ending on spin 17.

Taking a glance at the paytable shows cash values rather than multiples of the stake. Awards are per symbol and per winning line, and wins on all played lines are added into the total. The stake is listed here at 2.00 a spin. Scatter pays land on top of the line pays. Five of a kind pays 6.00 for the Wild and for Dorothy, 4.00 for the Mayor, 3.00 for the Lollipop Boy and the Lullaby Girl, 2.00 for Toto and the Hut, and 1.20 apiece for Glinda, the Slippers, the Hat And Watch and the Basket. That 2.00 is also the stake the test session was played at. Five Wilds, then, is three times the stake — the symbol pays are modest, and the slot's scale lives in the features.

The Wizard of Oz Munchkinland supplies two kinds of wilds to help assemble winners; one is the ordinary Wild, which substitutes for every paying symbol. Witch Wilds, Tornado Wilds and the lollipops all count as wild for the Wild symbol once the features are running. The other is 'No Place Like Home', a scatter which is also wild for the Slippers. It does not appear at all on the reel set used for the free spins. Five of them grant the There's No Place Like Home Jackpot of 5000x the bet.

The Witch, the Wheel and the Active Features Box

Some components have surfaced in earlier slots when it comes to features. Light & Wonder released Thunder Drums Leaping Lions six days before this one, and Huff N' Even More Puff in May. Only the Munchkin Parade Bonus needs scatters to start; the rest arrive on their own. Some are new, and the features roster includes Munchkin Symbols, the lollipops, the Witch Feature and the Munchkin Parade Bonus. Toto Super Spins sit inside the bonus round rather than the base game.

Core to the slot is the Munchkin Symbol system, which before every spin selects 2 of them from the Mayor, the Lollipop Boy and the Lullaby Girl. Which two are chosen changes from spin to spin. It then swaps a number of reel positions with them, and up to 5 reels can change to alternative reels holding more of those positions. In the Witch Feature the selection drops to 1 or 2 symbols and up to 4 reels can switch.

Keep a watch out for the lollipops, since a Pink, Orange or Blue Lollipop can drop on the final reel and spin to display a prize on either side. The prize on the side it lands on is the one awarded. It behaves as a wild in a winning combination. It pays the shown bet multiplier on top of the line win, and Pink displays 1, 2, 3, 6 and 10 alongside Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow and Dorothy. Blue stretches from 8 to 60; Orange from 2 to 10. Orange's steps are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10.

Then there is the Witch Feature. Witch Wild is wild for the Wild symbol, so a swapped reel plays as a full wild reel. It can trigger instantly on any wagered spin, and it may grant an enlargement, taking the grid to 8 or 10 rows. The feature runs on its own reel set, and neither 'No Place Like Home' nor the Bonus symbol turns up on it. Between 1 and 5 reels are swapped with Witch Wilds and/or Tornado Wilds, and a Tornado Wild reel loads with Blue Lollipops worth 0.25 to 1x the bet each and/or Multi-Coloured Lollipops worth 1x up to 250x, plus the four character jackpots. The lollipops filling a Tornado reel are wild for the Wild symbol too. Blue Lollipops pay what they display. Multi-Coloured Lollipops spin and land before assessment. Winning combinations otherwise work as they do in the base game.

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The free spins are triggered when 3 scattered Bonus symbols drop in view anywhere on the reels, while dropping 4 also pays 10x the total bet and 5 also pays 50x. Those scatter payouts come on top of the bonus itself.

Before the feature begins, one wheel spin follows. The panel says outright that the wheel does not reflect the odds of a prize being awarded. The wheel holds the Dorothy (2000x), Scarecrow (500x), Tin Man (100x) and Cowardly Lion (50x) jackpots along with free spin counts of 7, 8, 10, 12 and 20. A jackpot awards a second wheel spin, guaranteed to supply a free spin count.

Once in, the round operates on a three-slot Active Features box, and every free spin shoves a fresh feature in from the left and one out of the right. The three boxes start blank, so the opening spins of a round run with less in play than the later ones. Once out, it no longer pays. A Wild Reel feature turns one reel wild for the Wild symbol, and it is guaranteed to apply alongside Extra Munchkins. The features are the Pink, Orange and Blue Lollipop, 1 Reel Extra Munchkins, 2 Reels Extra Munchkins, All Munchkins Wild, Wild Reel, All Wins Except Jackpot 2x and All Wins Except Jackpot 3x, and multipliers stack multiplicatively, while lollipops on the final reel are additive. If All Munchkins Wild is in the box, the Mayor, the Lollipop Boy and the Lullaby Girl all turn wild for the Wild symbol. Also, free spins are retriggered in the same manner as noted above if three or more Bonus drop in the feature. A retrigger hands back the initial free spin count rather than another wheel spin.

Lastly, Toto Super Spins may be granted once at random after the third free spin. A 'You Have Found Toto' banner announces it. They repeat the original free spin count and broaden the box to four slots for the remainder of the round, retriggers included. On the triggering spin the three active features shift right, a fourth joins at the left, and all four are active.

The Minty Summary: Three bonus rounds across 315 spins handed back 69.7% of what went in, and the largest of them was worth 26 times the stake — some way short of the smallest jackpot the wheel carries, which is 50x.

315 Spins for Three Bonus Rounds

No one wants to grow bored in a base game while waiting for the best bets to trigger, so to offset this the win rate is high, and just under half the spins paid, whether that's a Munchkin Symbol combo or not. The balance bottomed out at 808.20 over the run.

Due to the low symbol values, these token wins are naturally fairly trivial most of the time. The best spin outside a bonus paid 17.60, or 8.8 times the stake, on spin 131. Across 315 test spins, 146 paid. That works out at 46% of them. 86 of those paid less than the stake, yet they do fight the base game blues and keep engagement levels up, as does the Active Features box itself. Spin 262 returned 15.20 and spin 228 returned 12.00, the next two best without a bonus attached. It is not exactly brand new as a comparable sort of rolling feature has been employed before. But the Witch Feature, as well as small adrenaline hits from regular wins, keeps the slot ticking along.

The Wizard of Oz Munchkinland can still be quite steady, as you might anticipate from a slot sitting at the bottom of the volatility scale. The first 89 spins of the session produced no bonus at all. During testing, the bonus game triggered late, on spin 90, and paid 12x the stake, and then the second trigger arrived just 7 spins later, retriggered. It paid 26x - the best result of the session.

The delay does heighten anticipation for free spins. But it also kind of locks you in for the long haul too, and it is tough to walk away when the box is still rotating features. The three rounds paid 81.20 between them. The next bonus game did trigger 117 spins later. It landed on spin 214. It paid 2.6x and that was that: three rounds for 18% of everything won, 630.00 wagered against 439.40 back, and a balance that never once rose above the 1,000.00 it began with. The 315 spins closed at 809.40, down 190.60 on the start.

The Munchkin Symbol engine isn't entirely ground-breaking, still, it's simple to like, or at least admire what Light & Wonder has built. Reels can show Munchkin Symbols in the bonus even with no Extra Munchkins feature sitting in the box.

The Wizard of Oz Munchkinland exudes charm too, and the movie's cast bolsters the Oz vibe.