Fantasini: Master of Mystery Slot
Fantasini: Master of Mystery is a 5-reel, 243-all-ways-pay online slot from NetEnt. Previously only available at SportingBet, NetEnt announced at the end of 2015 that this slot was to made available to all NetEnt casinos towards the end of January or the beginning of February, 2016. Fantasini is a magician whom styles himself the 'Master of Mystery'. He performs magic the old fashioned way by cutting a rabbit in half or pulling a woman out of a hat. There is none of the friendly banter of David Blaine or the understated close-up magic of David Copperfield here.
Fantasini is joined on the reels by his glamorous lady assistant, a magical chained box, a crystal ball, a pair of handcuffs (kinky!) and a knife spearing three cards for some reason (a shame as the hand totals eighteen, which is a decent blackjack hand), plus (completely appropriately for once) playing card values nine to ace. You can choose the size of the coin you wish to gamble with from 0.01 to 1.00, and the number of coins you want to gamble with for any one spin from one to ten. All possible pay lines (all 243 of them!) are in play at all times. Because of this, your final wager is your coin size multiplied by the number of coins multiplied by twenty-five. When you're ready to allow the magic to happen, hit the spin button.
Payout & bonus rounds
The lowest winning payout in normal play is 3x your bet-per-line for three nines, tens or jacks. The jackpot is for five of Fantasini's version of Debbie McGee, at 1,000x your line wager.
The great Fantasini is the wild symbol here. He substitutes for all other symbols.
For each spin there is the 'linked reels' feature. When the reels begin to tumble a golden chain appears around two of them, and the symbols on these two reels become identical. As the reels spin, occassionally the chain will expand to link three reels, four reels or even all five. The more reels that are linked of course, the more chance you have of scoring a winning combination.
This online slots game looks very pretty, but the gameplay is lacking in magic. A few scatter symbols and bonus features would not have gone amiss here, and despite the linked reels feature, this aspect of the slot does not seem to make wins any more frequent. This is not one of NetEnt's best slots, no matter how decent the graphics – and that's not an illusion!