Dave Lame Bad Magician

Dave Lame Bad Magician: Slot Overview

Have you noticed when magicians perform their routines, they often spend a lot longer on the build-up than on the actual trick itself. All that swanning around a stage with attractive assistants, to a backing track of cheesy music getting everything in place. Then you have to make sure not to blink, or you might miss the actual magic. Fine, we get it, the dramatic ramping up is used to build tension, and as long as it leads to some form of payoff, the audience is generally happy to put up with the chichi showmanship.

What happens when both the showmanship and the payoff never quite meet expectations? That's the question formed after playing Dave Lame Bad Magician from SG Digital: a magic-themed slot set on stage at a theatre, complete with drum rolls, big top music, and a look that makes you wonder if SG was going for some sort of retro thing. Yes or no, the game looks more dated than stylish, though it packs a lot of features in its various magician pockets.

Played on a traditional 5-reel, 3-row game grid, which expands during one of the features, Dave Lame Bad Magician provides 20 fixed paylines to land winning combinations across. Dave might be a lame magician, but one thing that is not so lame is the math model driving the game. First up is an RTP figure of 96.10% combined with volatility officially classed as medium-high. Regular wins occur at a rate of 1 in 4.71 spins, while bonus games trigger on average every 153.9 spins, though they seemed more frequent during our testing sessions.

Playable from 20 p/c to $/€50 per spin, line-pays occur when matching symbols land on adjacent reels beginning on the far-left reel. Card royals J-A printed on actual cards are used for the low pay symbols while saws, bunnies in hats, flowers, and the game's logo are the high pays. Premium symbols payout 5 to 25 times the stake for five of a kind, bested by the wild, which is worth up to 50x for a line of five. Wilds land anywhere, though they are usually there to replace any of the pay symbols to complete line wins.

Dave Lame Bad Magician: Slot Features

There's no shortage of special symbols, modifiers, or bonus games in Dave Lame Bad Magician. Starting with the Dave Lame's Disappearing Act feature, during the base game, there is a chance that Dave Lame appears on both sides of the reels. When he does, win lines pay both ways for 2-5 respins, and wins on multiple lines are added together.

Keep an eye out for the bonus symbol, it appears on reels 1, 3, or 5 in the base game, and landing 3 at once gains you entry to the Pick A Pot feature. Here, 5 red cups containing one bonus game each are shuffled around on a table. Players pick a pot to reveal one of the 5 bonus games.

Then, you can either collect the feature or gamble it. When gambling, 2 pots are shuffled, and players pick one to move up or down the feature list. If the bottom feature was initially won, it is possible to pick a cup containing a consolation prize. If you get this one you win 10-15x the bet and go back to the base game.

The following bonus games are available in the game:

The Knife Throw bonus game displays a spinning wheel with an assistant tied to the middle and 10 balloons around the wheel's edge. Players pick 3 balloons for Dave to throw knives at, each one revealing a bet multiplier. The possible values are x2, x3, x5, x8, x10, x20, x30, or x50. When 3 balloons have been popped, the values are added together and awarded. If you were wondering, Dave won't throw the knife at the lady, only at balloons.

Rabbits out of Dave's Hat awards 6 free spins. On each spin, rabbits or doves leap out of a hat and land on the reel in random positions, turning them wild. This feature cannot be retriggered.

The Card Trick bonus game also awards 6 free spins on a grid where only special card symbols appear. Before the round begins, players pick one of these 5 cards – 2x, 5x, 8x, 10x, or 25x. If this card lands on a free spin, it doubles its value. During the feature, when cards land on the grid, they lock in place, then all values are added up and awarded when the free spins end. If a joker card lands, Dave reveals one of the multiplier cards – if it matches the card you initially selected, then it is increased by its original value.

Winning the Escapology feature awards an unlimited free spins bonus game. During this one, whenever a special tap symbol lands, it adds an extra row, +10 ways to the existing grid, and increases the win multiplier by +1. Free spins end when the reel set reaches a total of 9 rows high.

The final feature is the Sawing a Reel in Half bonus. When winning this one, Dave cuts the grid so players get either 2, 3, or 4 separate reel sets. When wilds land, they are transferred onto all other reel sets. Also, landing 3 bonus symbols on a reel set awards +2 additional free spins.

Dave Lame Bad Magician: Slot Verdict

Like The Shitty Beatles in Wayne's World, Dave Lame Bad Magician isn't just a clever name. If SG was going for a retro look they have done better to push the clock back a few extra years. Maybe if they'd worked the very early days of illusion, or used an Edwardian/Harry Houdini angle, or even done the 80s thing other studios are doing, it might have worked better than the Freddi Fish era looking game we got. Dave's got a friendly Mr Bean vibe, yet it’s hard to get past the feeling that, yeah, it is all a bit lame.

This applies to other parts of the game too, the animations, for one, are pretty sluggish, the pace might have benefited from an extra push to get it going, and the features are amusing yet come across underpowered. Dave Lame Bad Magician follows on from other SG related slots like Cluedo Cash Mystery, being jam-packed with a large number of bonus games and features. Like Gremlins, SG has used a concept Blueprint Gaming has made famous of spinning a reel to win bonus games, which can then be gambled for potentially better ones. It shows you how much Blueprint Gaming has honed its craft. For example, The Goonies Return, to pick just one feature fest, is a master class in execution by comparison.

As to rewards, Dave Lame Bad Magician isn't going to set the world of illusions alight, but they aren't bad. The slot's home page touts payouts of up to 5,000x the bet, though the game sheet lowers the 'Maximum Win' to 4,048x the bet. Interestingly, despite the name, Dave Lame's Disappearing Act provided the biggest win during the review. Not to say Dave can't step it up in the bonus games, but it didn't pan out that way for us during testing.

To conclude, Dave Lame Bad Magician's title set the bar pretty low from the outset, which the rest of the game never really managed to lift it. To sign off with a cultural reference, the experience was akin to Gob's disappearing yacht act from the show Arrested Development. 'Where once there was a yacht, now there is not', he proclaims, before sinking the family's $700k boat to the tune of The Final Countdown.