Defenders of Mystica

Hear ye players, in yonder realm lies the land of Mystica, a fairy tale kingdom of powerful fairies which appears to be in need of defence. This is some backstory info to Defenders of Mystica, an online slot from developer Yggdrasil Gaming. Quite why Mystica requires defending is never made clear, so to really dig into the game world may require an injection of imagination on the part of the user. Defenders of Mystica is all about imagination, being a fantasy slot built primarily around a ‘supernatural’ mystery symbol, set in the imaginative land of Mystica…

The view presented of this fantasy land is a turreted city built onto the side of a hill or cliff, with water features running through it. It’s pretty neat, pretty mystical, a bit like King’s Landing before Dany raised it to the ground with the aid of dragon fire. Although actually, it’s not super mystical looking in the beginning, more like an elaborate Mediaeval city situated in a precarious location. Defenders of Mystica’s artwork, while quite detailed, has an odd quality as well, some sort of jarring juxtaposition between background and reel set that raises the suspicion the game was not built by Yggdrasil Gaming’s all-star team. It might have been the blurry quality of the demo; hard to say. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the view, but there’s something a little off about it, too.

Here’s some more info on the gaming grid. Constructed using an unusual 7 reels, they are lined up in a 3-5-5-5-5-5-3 formation with 28,125 ways to win. However, the game pays left to right as well as right to left, starting from the outermost reels. As for volatility, Yggdrasil Gaming has rated this as super high, while the RTP is 96%, and hit frequency weighs in at 30%. When picking a wager, the options are 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin – a bonus buy is available, too.

Pay symbols in Defenders of Mystica are divided into low pay 10 to A card royals, designed in a flourishing style, plus 5 fairy characters as the high pay symbols. When a 7-of-a-kind win hits, it is worth 0.5 times the bet for any of the card ranks, bumping up to 0.6 to 2.5 times the bet for the high-pay picture symbols. Wilds appear on the board only when revealed by the mystery symbol, substituting for any regular pay symbol. Wilds may also appear with a random multiplier of x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x7, or x10.

Defenders of Mystica: Slot Features

Joining the Mystery symbol are respins, Defenders of Mystica’s free spins bonus round and its bonus buy function.

Mystery Symbols

Colourful orb mystery symbols are present on the five middle reels. Mystery symbols reveal the same symbol, which can be anything except the scatter. As mentioned, wilds only appear on the board when revealed by themystery symbol.

Respins

When a mystery symbol participates in a winning combination, it triggers a respin where the winning mystery symbols remain on the grid while all other symbols are removed. Symbols then avalanche in. Respins are played before free spins if both trigger at the same time.

Free Spins

In the base game, landing scatter symbols on the first and seventh reel trigger 7 free spins. If any mystery symbols are in view when this happens, they are transformed into scatter symbols, each one awarding +1 free spin. When mystery symbols are used as part of a win in free spins, they become sticky, falling to the bottom of the grid, where they sit till the feature ends. Free spins cannot be retriggered.

Buy Free Spins

Players have the chance of buying the free spins round for 100 times the bet. This awards 7 free spins plus any extra free spins if landing extra mystery symbols.

Defenders of Mystica: Slot Verdict

Defenders of Mystica is not without its charm, but if you haven’t totally bought into the defence of a mystical realm story by now, it might be harder to buy into the rest of the game, too. The opposite likely applies as well, though, so if the thought of getting down and tempting fortune shoulder-to-shoulder with a group of powerful lady fairies sounds pretty neat, then Defenders of Mystica might be right up your refuse-strewn cobble-stoned street.

The gaming side of Defenders of Mystica fared rather so-so, a tad clunky, sluggish, slow, yet the unusual 7-reel grid set-up is an oddity some may wish to have a gawk at out of a feeling of curiosity. It’s doubly unusual to see such a large gaming matrix pay both ways as well, proving these fairies refuse to play by the book around here. There is a huge number of paylines, too, though not so much in the way of extraordinary features. The base game’s got mystery symbols and respins, so hopefully, you can get them to link with a ton of matching symbols on a ton of winning ways. Then free spins stir the pot by making winning mystery symbols sticky – an idea on the rise-ish, though far from being overdone, as seen in games like Relax Gaming’s Net Gains and Play’n GO’s slot Pandora’s Box of Evil. Despite not really stepping up during the review, Defenders of Mystica’s cocktail of mechanical set-up and features can technically knock out wins of up to 10,000 times the bet.

Defenders of Mystica ended up being quite mystical, but not to the extent of losing ourselves in an enchanting world of make-believe and never wanting the fantasy to end. There are one or two interesting ideas here, or oddities at least, which might prompt a look, but unless you’re totally sold on the storyline, defend Mystica? Bah, they can have it.