Introduction to Mahjong Magic
Mahjong Magic is a casino slot from Playtech featuring a popular game. Mahjong is a traditional Chinese board game played with tiles that blends strategy, skill, and a bit of luck. You play it with 144 tiles with Chinese characters, bamboo, circles, winds, dragons, and bonus tiles, with the goal to build a complete winning hand before your opponents do. A standard game involves four players who draw and discard tiles in turn, forming sets like pongs (three of a kind), chows (sequences), and kongs (four of a kind).
Some of the game’s characters appear as symbols in this slot. You will also find a young girl to the left of the grid who looks a lot like the girl in Ultra Ace. After spinning the reels for a while, we realize that the games are exactly the same; the only difference is the layout. Let’s see what that means for Mahjong Magic.
Theme, Gameplay, and Payouts
Mahjong Magic is a video slot from Playtech with 5 reels, 4 rows, and 1,024 ways to win. The Min.bet is 0.1, and the Max.bet is 500. The game has a high RTP of 96.95% and medium volatility. Taking home the max win will award you 10,000x the bet.
The game has a background of a big pile of golden coins. Behind them, in a pink mist, are some mountains. In front of the pile stand the five reels, and above them is a Chinese-looking roof. To the left stands a girl holding her hands on her hips, and to the right are the buttons you use to play the game. To make a win, you need to land at least 3 matching symbols on adjacent reels, starting on the first reel to the left. You can play the game on mobile phones, tablets, and desktop computers.
The lower-paying symbols in Mahjong Magic are Chinese Mahjong characters. They will give you between 0.3 and 0.5x the bet for a win of 5 symbols. The higher-paying symbols are also Chinese characters on Mahjong tiles. They award between 1x and 2.5x the bet for wins containing 5 symbols. The Wild Symbol substitutes all mentioned symbols, but not the Scatter Symbol.
Special Features & Slot Mechanics
What is the max win in the slot Mahjong Magic?
You can win up to 10,000x the bet.
What features are available in the slot Mahjong Magic?
The features are Wild Symbol, Cascading Reels Feature, Cascade Multiplier Trail, Golden Symbols. Free Games Feature, Symbol Upgrade On-Reel Feature, Feature Bet Mode, and Feature Buy.
Wild Symbol
The Wild Symbol can stand in for almost any other symbol to help form winning combinations. The only symbol it cannot replace is the Scatter symbol.
Cascading Reels Feature
When a spin creates one or more wins, the Cascading Reels Feature starts. All symbols that are part of a winning combination are removed from the reels, except for Golden Symbols. This leaves empty spaces, and the symbols above fall down to fill them. The reels are then checked again for new wins, and the cascade continues until no more wins appear. Scatter wins are only counted once, after all cascading action has ended.
Cascade Multiplier Trail
The Cascade Multiplier Trail increases your wins as cascades continue. The first win of a spin uses a x1 multiplier. Each additional cascade increases the multiplier step by step to x2, x3, and then x5. Once the highest multiplier is reached, it stays the same for the rest of that spin. After all cascades finish, the multiplier resets back to x1.
Golden Symbols
Golden Symbols can appear only on reels 2, 3, and 4. When a Golden Symbol is part of a winning combination, it does not disappear. Instead, it turns into a Wild symbol for the next cascade, giving you a better chance of more wins.
Free Games Feature
Landing 3, 4, or 5 Scatter symbols awards 10, 12, or 14 Free Games. If the feature is triggered using only Red Scatter symbols, the Cascade Multiplier Trail doubles to x2, x4, x6, and x10. If one Black Scatter is included, the multipliers increase to x3, x5, x7, and x11. With two Black Scatters, they rise to x4, x6, x8, and x12. With three or more Black Scatters, the multipliers become x5, x7, x9, and x13.
Landing 3, 4, or 5 or more Red Scatter symbols during the Free Games will retrigger the feature and award 10, 12, or 14 extra spins.
Symbol Upgrade On-Reel Feature
The girl to the left of the reels can randomly activate special upgrades. She may add Golden Symbols to reels 2, 3, or 4, turn all symbols on the middle reel into Golden Symbols for a single spin, or upgrade a Red Scatter symbol into a Black Scatter.
Feature Bet Mode
Activating Feature Bet Mode increases the chances of Black Scatter symbols appearing. This option raises your bet by 1.3x, but it does not affect the payout values of the symbols.
Feature Buy
You can choose to buy direct access to the Free Spins feature by paying 65x, 76x, or 88x your bet for a triggering spin with 1, 2, or 3 Black Scatter symbols.
Final Thoughts on Mahjong Magic
Mahjong Magic never quite hits the spot. A so-called reskin is made by keeping all the features and mechanics of a game and applying them to a new design. A reskin usually pops up a year later than the original game, but Playtech chose to release two identical games at the same time. Even the girl at the side of the reels is the same character; she has just exchanged her modern Joker costume for some other hip clothes. The game is pretty average at best, and the Mahjong theme is pleasant enough, but the overall feeling is that this keeps repeating itself. The RTP of 96.95% is really solid, almost a percentage point above the average slot, but it doesn’t help to make this a memorable game.
There are plenty of features, and the free spins can get busy. The cascade feature and the multiplier can also spice things up, but it’s kind of disappointing that the multiplier stops at x5. Quite different from, for example, Doublemax games, such as 10000 BC Doublemax, where the multiplier doubles on every win until you reach x1,024.
Mahjong Magic from Playtech will not impress any player.
