Tap Into the Arcane with What’s Up? Witches by NetEnt

Most of the time, games that feature magic and magical creatures tend to go all-in on the fantasy angle. However, that leaves modern fantasy criminally underutilised, as there’s a lot you can do imagining the world of today with secret spellcasters. Fortunately, NetEnt’s What’s Up? Witches slot is here to pick up the slack. We join a trio of witches as they try to balance fighting demons, acing exams, and keeping the whole thing under wraps.

It’s an interesting premise for a game and sets a good first impression, but will the rest of the slot be able to follow up on that? Let’s find out together in this review.

What’s Up? Witches Visuals

NetEnt’s art team is one of the best in the business, and they resume their triumphant streak in this release. What’s Up? Witches takes place in the apartment that our magical trio are renting out. The walls are painted with magical symbols, and regular lights have been replaced with candles and hanging chandeliers. Forming wins has icons disappearing in a flash of magic, while special symbols spread fire across the reels.

Available symbols include three magical runes, arcane accessories, and the witches themselves. The word Wild written in a fiery font is the Wild symbol, while yellow crystals are Scatters. You can also come across two types of grimoires, which are magical books that activate the Arcane feature.

What’s Up? Witches Gameplay and Features

You play the What’s Up? Witches slot on a 6-reel grid, with a 4-6-6-6-6-4 layout. The bottom-most row is a horizontal reel that spins from right to left. This NetEnt slot has 20,736 ways to win. Scoring payouts requires three or more matching symbols in adjacent reels. All winning combinations must start with the leftmost reel.

The game also uses the Avalanche feature, which means winning icons are removed from the grid. This allows new symbols to drop and fill any gaps, potentially resulting in another payout. Avalanches continue until there are no more wins.

Arcane Feature

Every spin, up to three spells can appear on the reels. There are nine variants of the spell, all of which transform into Wilds. However, the direction of the spell tells you which adjacent symbols will also be turned into Wilds.

You activate the Arcane feature when a regular grimoire or a super grimoire lands on the horizontal reel. Normal grimoires will only trigger spells directly above them, while super grimoires force all spells to turn into Wilds regardless of their position. Only one grimoire can be present on the reels simultaneously.

If multiple spells are close to each other, they can activate each other in a chain reaction. The initial spell will fire first, after which other spells will trigger, going from the leftmost to the rightmost reel. This can result in Wilds receiving multiplier upgrades up to 3x.

Free Spins

Four or five Scatters anywhere on the reels award 10 or 15 free spins, respectively. However, instead of standard free spins, the bonus round is played on a blank 5×5 grid. Each spin, there’s a chance one of the blank spaces is replaced with a multiplier cell, whose value ranges from 1x to 100x.

The Magic Orb sits next to the reels and can randomly activate one of nine modifiers every round. These will increase the potential payout, add more multipliers, or extend the Free Spins feature. Below, we’ve listed all nine modifiers and their effects:

• Doubler: Randomly doubles 3 multipliers on the reels.
• Collector: Collects between 2 and 6 multipliers on the grid.
• Upgrader: Randomly upgrades 3 multipliers on the reels by 1x.
• Compressor: Adds up all multipliers on a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line and removes them from the grid. It will then place a new multiplier with the sum of all previous symbol values at the last position of the selected line.
• Adder: Adds a random value ranging from 5x to 200x to 3 multipliers on the grid.
• Generator: Places 3 multipliers on empty positions on the reel, with random values between 1x and 500x.
• Convertor: Converts up to 5 positions to a higher multiplier value.
• Sweeper: Collects and removes all 1x multipliers from the grid.
• +3 Spins: Extends the Free Spins bonus round by 3 spins.

Elevate

Players can use the Elevate feature to jump the queue and activate the game’s features immediately. The more lucrative a bonus round is, the more you’ll have to pay to activate it.

• Bonus Hunt increases the likelihood of Free Spins triggering. Costs 3x your bet.
• Arcane guarantees the activation of the Arcane feature. Costs 10x your stake.
• Free Spins immediately trigger the Free Spins bonus round. Costs 100x your wager.
• Arcane + Free Spins plays through the Arcane feature first and then adds four or five Scatters to the reels. Costs 300x your bet.
• Arcane + Free Spins Maximum is a repeat of the previous Elevate bonus, except it guarantees 15 free spins. Costs 500x your stake.

What’s Up? Witches RTP and Payouts

The RTP for the What’s Up? Witches slot is 96.03% when playing the base game. If you use the Elevate feature, the RTP ranges from 96.04% to 96.08%, depending on which bonus round you activate. While buying bonuses does seem to give you a slight advantage, it’s not big enough to consider the extra cost, unless you’re a high roller and have money to throw around.

You can win up to 10,180x your stake. It’s a solid payout for a high-variance slot, though you’ll need plenty of lucky charms to claim this magical jackpot.