18+ Only. Play Responsibly.
Nine lamps had finished opening.
€52.80.
That was the treasure.
Not a mountain of jewels.
Not a palace.
Not enough gold to require several camels and a suspiciously muscular guard.
€52.80.
My balance showed €176.
I had started with €160.
So I had made €16.
After nearly an hour of genies, enchanted architecture, flying symbols and enough magic lamps to create a serious ventilation problem, I had come away with the financial equivalent of a pleasant dinner.
I accepted this immediately.
The important part was how far my wishes had fallen before the genie finally granted one.
At the beginning, I had been much less reasonable.
I set 10,000 Wonders 10K Ways to €1.20.
The screen opened onto domes, towers, blue sky and the sort of palace architecture that strongly suggested somebody nearby owned either immense treasure or seventeen decorative fountains.
The symbols were equally restrained.
A princess.
A man who looked fully prepared to discover a lamp.
A genie.
A white bird.
Gold letters.
Jewels.
And, naturally, the lamp itself.
The first few spins produced no lamp conspiracy whatsoever.
Three Ks connected.
They disappeared in a burst.
New symbols dropped into their places.
A second win formed.
Those vanished too.
More symbols arrived.
€4.32 eventually appeared on the win counter.
The screen had performed two magical explosions to produce slightly less than four stakes.
Fine.
The legend was still warming up.
A few spins later, a palace Wild appeared along the upper part of the reels.
Below it sat several matching symbols.
They connected.
Explosion.
The replacements dropped.
Another connection.
Explosion.
A third arrangement almost formed and stopped one symbol short.
The palace remained magnificently visible above the whole thing while €7.20 rolled in.
I had apparently been granted temporary access to royal architecture for seven euros and twenty cents.
Then the first lamp appeared.
One.
Golden.
Glowing.
Completely alone.
Nothing happened.
It disappeared on the next spin.
I needed six together.
The game had already established that enchanted lamps were perfectly capable of appearing.
Their main difficulty was agreeing on a meeting place.
I continued at €1.20.
Two lamps landed.
Not enough.
Later, three.
Still not enough.
A cascade removed a row of symbols and dropped a fourth lamp into the replacements.
Four lamps now occupied different parts of the screen.
For a moment, ancient legend seemed to be assembling itself.
Then the cascade ended.
All four left.
My balance moved through €150.
The genie continued appearing as a normal paying symbol.
This seemed like a poor use of supernatural resources.
There he was.
Actual genie.
Capable, according to several centuries of storytelling, of altering reality.
I needed six lamps.
He paid €2.40 and vanished in an explosion.
The next replacements contained a J.
My wish had apparently been processed as a consonant.
I kept spinning.
A princess combination exploded.
Three lamps appeared among the new symbols.
Another small win removed part of the screen.
A fourth lamp dropped.
Then a fifth.
Five.
One short.
There were now enough lamps on screen to furnish an extremely specialised shop.
No sixth arrived.
The final symbols settled.
Gone.
That was roughly when my expectations changed.
I no longer wanted legendary wealth.
I no longer wanted jewels.
I had stopped mentally allocating rooms in the palace.
I wanted six lamps to occupy the same screen for approximately one second.
That was the entire wish.
The balance fell through €140.
A €9.60 cascade helped.
Then €3.84.
The symbols exploded with great ceremony every time.
Purple flashes.
New arrivals.
Golden frames.
A whole Arabian night repeatedly rearranging itself because four As had managed to stand near one another.
The lamps remained difficult.
Two.
Nothing.
One.
Nothing.
Four.
Gone.
The genie appeared again.
I watched him contribute to a €1.80 win.
This was becoming embarrassing for both of us.
At €128, another cascade started.
A line connected.
Explosion.
Two lamps dropped.
Another win formed underneath them.
Explosion.
Two more lamps arrived.
Four.
The next replacement gave me a fifth.
The screen settled.
No sixth.
I pressed spin again.
€124.40.
The €1.20 left the balance.
The reels filled.
Lamp.
Lamp.
Princess.
Lamp.
Gold letter.
Lamp.
The remaining symbols dropped.
Two more lamps.
Six.
Exactly six.
My balance stood at €123.20.
The palace disappeared behind a feature screen.
The six lamps stayed.
Three respins appeared.
After all that wandering, the lamps had finally agreed to remain in the same place.
First respin.
Nothing new.
Two left.
Second.
Nothing.
One.
This was an astonishingly short period of cooperation from six magical objects I had spent most of the session trying to introduce to one another.
Last respin.
A seventh lamp landed.
Held.
The counter jumped back to three.
There it was.
My first properly granted wish of the night.
I immediately developed another one.
Eight lamps.
First respin missed.
Second missed.
The counter reached one again.
Then lamp eight arrived.
Three respins returned.
The genie had discovered extensions.
The empty spaces on the screen now looked far more important than the occupied ones.
I counted them.
Watched them.
Stopped caring entirely about the princess.
The white bird could have carried away half the palace.
There were eight lamps.
I wanted nine.
Two respins vanished.
One remained.
The final spin started.
A lamp landed.
Nine.
Back to three.
At this point I had spent most of the base game asking for six and had somehow become dissatisfied with eight.
Magic had ruined me very quickly.
The remaining spaces refused to cooperate.
First respin.
Nothing.
Second.
Nothing.
Last one.
The symbols settled without another lamp.
The counter reached zero.
Now the nine lamps finally opened.
€2.40.
€3.60.
€6.
€1.20.
€4.80.
€9.60.
€12.
€3.60.
€9.60.
I added them as they appeared.
€52.80.
The lamps vanished.
The palace returned.
My balance became €176.
There it was.
I had started at €160.
I had finished €16 ahead.
The genie reappeared among the symbols on the next static screen, looking far too magnificent for the scale of what had just happened.
At the beginning of the session, I might have asked him for 10,000 wonders.
By then I had learned.
I wanted one thing.
A €16 profit.
He had managed it.
I closed the game before either of us became ambitious again.
No payout. No dignity. Just Wild Bison Stampede and static.