Merlin's Grimoire Slot – Free Demo

Looking up what a grimoire actually is

The word "Grimoire" may already be known to you if you're occultly inclined. If you're like me, however, you would probably have to look it up. My expertise on all things witchy stretch no further than what has been gathered from viewing a couple of episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

A swift search shows that the word Grimoire is thought to have sprung from Old French. The book itself, though, is thought to date back to the ancient Middle East. As it turns out, "Grimoire" is truly only a fancy name for a witch's journal, and it is a book of sorcery with directions on how to fashion magical objects, namely amulets and talismans.

7776 ways inside an overgrown ruin

In the realm of online wagering, Merlin's Grimoire is a 5-reel, 6-row slot with 7776 ways to win of the highest volatility. I played 260 spins of it at a stake of 2.00. The game comes supplied with an RTP setting of 96.20%. Over those spins I wagered 520.00 and got 571.20 back, a session return of 109.8%. At first, Merlin's Grimoire may come across as slightly bewildering. My best spin outside a bonus paid 24.00 on spin 33, twelve times the stake. It is in fact a rather straightforward game with heavy focus on symbol splitting that applies in both the base game and bonus.

As you would anticipate from Play'n GO, much labour has been invested in the visual look, and the outcome is just as striking as ever. The studio has gone back to this well before, with Rise of Merlin and The Green Knight. Set inside an overgrown stone ruin, there are plenty of fine details and animations to excite your cerebral cortex. The tall six-row grid opening as the reels split, the aged book turning its pages, and a scatter tease that pulls the whole frame in around it - it all gracefully reveals the remarkable talent available to Play'n GO.

Which reels light up, and what a split is worth

Wins are formed by adjacent symbols from left to right. A combination has to begin on the leftmost reel and carry on across neighbouring reels from there. Only the highest combination counts per symbol.

Core to the game are the Splitting Symbols, and chosen reels split every symbol landing on them. On the base game spin I captured, the three middle reels were the ones lit for splitting, with a 2.00 stake and 24,979.20 in the balance. Each split symbol doubles the winning payways it adds to. That is how the grid rises from a modest count of ways up to the full 7776.

The book serves as a Wild Scatter. It came in the numbers needed to pay a bonus three times across my 260 spins. It substitutes for all symbols wherever it lands.

Ten spins, one expanding symbol, three visits

10 free spins are on offer if you land 3 or more Wild Scatters. Mine arrived on spins 155, 169 and 219. It's all about the splitting here. The first round took my balance from 24,787.80, the lowest point of the session, up to 25,025.80. While the basic operation is the same, it comes with a couple of extra perks, and the splitting now spreads to all of the reels. More importantly, an expanding symbol is chosen at the outset of the initial 10 spins, and it expands to every spot it lands on.

It's of outmost importance that the expanding symbol shows up early in the bonus in order to get anything out of it at all. The second round came 14 spins after the first, and the third a further 50 spins after that. Regrettably, none of the three bonuses I triggered re-triggered. They were still the three biggest wins of the session. My three rounds delivered 120x, 56x and 39x the stake.

Minty’s Closing Thought: Seventy-five per cent of everything that came back — 430.00 of 571.20 — arrived while the book was on screen, and a game that concentrates its money that tightly is one you sit through rather than play.

50 paying spins out of 260

It's a bit startling to see Play'n GO bundle so much potential in a game that spends most of its time saying nothing. My high point was 25,125.60, reached on spin 219. Across 260 spins only 50 paid anything at all. The largest single return among them was the 240.00 on spin 155. 22 of those yielded less than the stake, with one run of 23 spins in a row handing back nothing whatsoever. That run ended on spin 250, with ten spins left to play. The bonus is the game: 430.00 of the 571.20 I won, 75% of everything, came out of those three rounds.

This is a tough game to sit down with casually, unless for some reason you're specifically into high volatility slots that make you wait, and prepared to spend a lengthy time running in circles. I finished on 25,051.20, up 51.20 on the balance I started with. Please Play'n GO, give your design crew a raise and take good care of them - they may be the cause anyone lingers at the reels long enough to see a book land.