Pumpkin Power

At first glance, this relatively new game from Novomatic looks just like a few other Halloween-themed games, like Halloween Fortune, for example. Being a current release of an old theme, the game has only acceptable graphics, with nothing outstanding as one would expect from a newer game. It plays with 243 ways to win, which is much preferred nowadays, so at least that beats most other games in one aspect. As for the game itself, well, it needs some good long periods of play to really get a good feel of it, which I couldn't have, so my comments here can only be skin-deep and non-exhaustive at all.

The Witch is the Wild symbol, appearing only on reels 2, 3 and 4, and substitutes for other symbols except for the Pumpkin symbols. I didn't realise that Novomatic games can have such dumb Wild symbols too, but there you go. The Wild symbol doesn't pay, doesn't double wins, doesn't stack, doesn't expand, so might as well doesn't exist! Shesh! The regular Pumpkin is the Scatter symbol, appearing only on reels 1, 3 and 5, and getting all 3 of them triggers 12 free spins. Hmm, any multiplier? Nope. It's yet another dumb symbol! There's another Pumpkin symbol that appears only on reel 3, the highlighted Pumpkin, which when appear, would throw a dice onto the reels to create new wins. It can pay 3, 4 or 5-of-a-kind wins for the symbol the dice lands on. If it lands on a Pumpkin Scatter symbol, it awards 3, 4 or 5 free spins. This is something quite new to me and something that I haven't seen anywhere else, but maybe I'm wrong.

As for the other symbols in the game, the House pays 80x, the Cat pays 20x, the Candle pays 10x, the Ring pays 10x, and the rest pay from 4.8x to 4x, all per total bet staked for 5 of each kind. A very low paytable. The playlines can be selected as preferred, from as little as 1 payline to the maximum 243 paylines, making the minimum starting bet from as low as 0.01 EUR for a 3-ways to win, up to 0.25 EUR bet per spin for the full 243-ways to win. I guess many players would like this selective feature, as it allows even the smallest bet to be played. Not many games would allow such manipulation of playlines, as more and more existing games are turning into fixed paylines games.

Well, as I have always expected from Novomatic games, it can start off rather cold or it can start off quite hot right from the beginning of game play, but this is not common. More likely, it'll start off cold, like it did for my first ever play on this Pumpkin Power game. Spin after spin of nothingness, with a few insignificant very small wins, which are in fact losses when compared to the amount of bet played, so my credit balance could do nothing else but go creeping down into the drain! That didn't take long at all, because I couldn't get any Free Spins game, nor could I get that special highlighted Pumpkin dice-throwing feature. The game ended as it had started, cold. What a big disappointment it was for me.