Forbidden Alchemy Slot Review

PG Soft makes a lot of online slots where symbols transform into something else. Of the 170 titles of theirs sitting in our catalogue, 50 carry a transformation mechanic of one kind or another, and three of their last five releases rely on it. It's a studio habit rather than an experiment. Forbidden Alchemy is the latest release to lean on that crutch, building an entire economy around manufacturing wilds because it doesn't put any on the reels to begin with.

The game takes place in a very good-looking alchemist's cellar. Above the layout sit four dim specimen jars containing a spiked skull, a red claw, a mandrake root with a face, and a branch of purple coral. The entire premise of the machine is getting those jars to light up and spill their contents onto the board, turning the matching symbols into wilds. When they're dark, it's a plain line slot waiting for a hit.

The math model runs on a five-by-three layout with twenty fixed lines. It's a high volatility release with a 32.26% hit frequency and an 8,000x max win. The bet floor sits at a steep 0.60 stake, which is higher than 157 of the PG Soft games we list. The studio contradicts itself on the return, with its catalogue stating 96.68% while its own game sheet claims 96.76%.

Without the jars, the payouts are modest. Five skulls max out at a 20x payout, while the four royal gemstones all pay a flat 4x for five of a kind and hand back a dismal 0.2x for three. Because the hit rate is fairly high, the board pays often, but most of those hits are three royals handing back a fifth of the stake. The balance drains at a gentle slope rather than dropping off a cliff, going no more than six spins without a hit, which is easier on the nerves but no cheaper in the long run.

The jars are where the money is supposed to be. On any random spin, one or more jars can activate. Every matching symbol on the matrix turns wild, and the jar's multiplier climbs by one for every conversion. The total win is then multiplied by the sum of all active jars. Because it's a headcount rather than a flat bonus, a single converted skull creates a x1 multiplier, which does nothing to a payout. And because the jars fire completely at random, they frequently turn a skull and a mandrake wild where no line runs through them, leaving the jars fully charged over a win line that pays zero.

When two jars fire together, the multipliers add up instead of replacing each other. Catching a skull and a coral jar at the same time can push a mediocre 11x board out at something closer to 50x. But that requires the right symbols to be sitting there when the trigger happens. And in the base game, the jars empty before the next spin starts. Every transformation begins at zero, meaning a x2 jar doubling a three-J line is just turning a fifth of the stake into two fifths.

The jars only hold onto their contents inside the free spins. Three alchemist scatters award 12 spins, scaling up to 20 spins for five scatters, and catching a pair during the round adds three more. Inside the feature, the transformations are persistent. A skull jar reaching x2 on the third spin stays at x2 on the eleventh, and a claw jar lighting later adds to the total. This stacking multiplier is the engine the 8,000x max win is built on.

Zombie Blasters, another PG Soft transformation slot, pays on about a quarter of its spins and caps at 10,000x. Forbidden Alchemy hits on nearly a third of its spins and caps at 8,000x, but those extra hits are heavily weighted toward 0.2x royal crumbs. The 8,000x cap is real, having been reached in a billion simulated spins, and the mechanic itself is a genuinely interesting idea. A multiplier that relies on how many of the right symbols happen to be on the grid is smarter than a flat x2. But the free spins round triggers roughly once in 244 spins and carries nearly thirty percent of the game's return. There's no bonus buy and no ante bet available to force the issue, and the auto spin menu doesn't even offer an option to stop when the feature finally hits. The base game spends most of its time teasing a round you can't buy, while feeding you fractions of your stake to keep you sitting there.