Arcane Reel Chaos

A supervillain called Deep Pockets threatens the city in Arcane Reel Chaos, and four unlikely metahumans — Psyop, Flare, Zero.x and Chronos — square off against him inside NetEnt's take on the superhero genre, styled darker than the studio's Wild Worlds release from the same stretch. The battle plays out among the ruins of a cathedral rather than a more conventional comic-book backdrop.

The grid runs five reels, three rows and 20 fixed paylines, playable from 0.20 up to 200 a spin. A, K, Q, J and 10 make up the royal symbols, joined by portraits of the four heroes and the villain himself, whose five-of-a-kind payout of 50x the stake makes him the top-paying regular symbol. A wild symbol also appears, substituting for every icon apart from the scatter.

Any base-game spin can randomly call in one of the four heroes and their power. Psyop turns two or three reels fully wild; Zero.x scatters three to five wild symbols across random positions; Flare applies a straight x3, x4 or x5 multiplier to the spin's win; and Chronos only shows up after a losing spin, forcing a chain of respins that continues until something lands, adding +1 to a multiplier meter with every respin up to a cap of x10.

Landing the scatter on reels one, three and five together launches the Free Spins round, where the heroes face Deep Pockets across as many as four escalating levels — his health and the attached multiplier both climb each round, from 2 health points at x1 up to 6 health points at x4. Beating the fourth level adds a further Victory Bonus payout on top.

Volatility falls in the medium band, hit frequency is listed at 34.76%, and NetEnt puts the return-to-player figure at 96.81%. Chronos's respin chain, not the Free Spins round, is what carries the game toward its 1,212x maximum win.