Halloween Horrors Megaways

Halloween Horrors Megaways: Slot Overview

Proving that you can, to a degree, predict the time of the year by the sort of slots being released comes Halloween Horrors Megaways from developer Iron Dog Studio. Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but you can certainly tell when Halloween and Christmas are getting closer as casino game makers release their seasonally themed games. Sometimes, you get lucky, and the studio in question designs something completely original, like Lucksome's irreverently humoured Christmas slot Saint Nicked. Other times, you get stocking fillers like Halloween Horrors Megaways, which felt like they were knocked out in an afternoon using spare parts.

Okay, maybe not an afternoon, but Halloween Horrors Megaways is a close (though not entirely the same) reskin of Pirate Kingdom Megaways, one of Iron Dog Studio's early Megaways slots released in 2019, which also went on to serve as a foundation for the studio's Branded Megaways concept. This means there really isn't anything in the way of novel features to look forward to. On the front end, Halloween Horrors Megaways presents a pretty bland Halloween scene, as well. The location is a graveyard at night, full of twisty branched trees, gravestones, a green-eyed pumpkin, candles, a house on the hill, that sort of thing. It's all unimaginatively generic, not an eyesore as such, yet visually, Halloween Horrors Megaways lacks anything interesting or engaging to remark on. The music's pretty decent, though.

Halloween Horrors Megaways plays out on a 6-reel gaming grid, landing 2 to 7 symbols on each reel on each spin. This mixes up the ways to win, where the maximum number possible is 117,649. Motoring along with a highly volatile math model, the RTP comes in at 96.13%, which for the record is slightly lower than Pirate Kingdom's 96.2%. Wins pay left to right from the leftmost side of the reels, and players may pick a stake of 20 p/c to $/€20 to go trick or treating.

Whenever a winning way occurs, the winning symbols are removed, and the symbols remaining on the reel strips tumble down. If after the symbols drop, another win is created, the tumble feature will repeat the process. Ten regular pay symbols line the pay table, with 10 to A spookily decorated card ranks as the lows and 5 progressively scary-looking high pay character symbols. The high pays are a Frankenstein's monster character, a wolf, a witch, a mummy, and a pumpkin head fellow. Hitting a 6 OAK low pay win awards 0.6 to 1 times the bet or a 6 premium symbols win pays 2 to 25 times the bet. Wilds are present on all but the leftmost reel and substitute for all non-special symbols. X2 Wilds also land on reels 2-6 and may substitute for any non-special symbol. Up to 3 X2 Wilds can appear on the same spin, multiplying their values up to x8.

Halloween Horrors Megaways: Slot Features

Followers of Iron Dog Studio's work will feel at home amongst Halloween Horrors Megaways' features, which include stalwarts such as free spins with locking reels and a win multiplier, plus a suite of free spins buy options.

Free Spins

Tumbles not only lead to repeat wins, but enough consecutive tumbles trigger the free spins round. More specifically, getting 4 consecutive tumbles in a row awards 8 free spins, plus you get +2 free spins for tumble 5, 6, and 7+. 14 free spins are the most you can get. Free spins have a win multiplier, which starts on x1 and increases by +1 following each win. Also, if a reel shows 7 symbols on it, it becomes locked so that it will always land 7 symbols until the end of the round. Each time a reel locks, a +1 free spin is awarded, even if it happens on the final spin. Another way to get more free spins is to achieve 4+ consecutive tumbles. Each consecutive tumble from 4 and onwards awards +2 free spins up to 14.

Buy Free Spins

From the feature buy menu, players can buy 6, 8, or 10 free spins with either 0 or 1 starting locked reels. Prices range from 30x to 130x the bet and return values are 96.15% to 96.45%, depending on the option chosen.

Halloween Horrors Megaways: Slot Verdict

It feels like Iron Dog Studio was treading water with this one since Halloween Horrors Megaways is a rehash of a slot released about 4 years ago with nothing new mechanically to speak of. That situation wouldn't be such an issue if the theme use wasn't so bland, but Halloween Horrors Megaways' appearance has nothing noteworthy, nothing of major interest, nothing that hasn't been used to prop up any number of Halloween slots in the past. You could say the same goes for Halloween slots in general since designers are limited in some ways as to what they can put into them. Even so, Halloween Horrors Megaways feels drier than they usually do, and aside from a few charismatic character symbols, there's little to nothing here to stop your eyeballs from falling asleep.

Moving past the sensorial impressions, Halloween Horrors Megaways' gameplay didn't fare much better. Again, if Iron Dog Studio hadn't used pretty much this exact same combination of features numerous times already, the feeling of redundancy might have lessened. Add the two sides of the coin together: low-energy theme use and the umpteenth time this gaming combination has appeared, and you've got a slot it was extraordinarily difficult to feel remotely engaged with or excited about. The stats are sturdy, though, where the max win has been registered as 25,000x the bet on the game info page.

To end up, if Halloween Horrors Megaways knocked on our door demanding candy while implying tricks we're in store, if we didn't cough up a Skittle or two, it would be hard to take it seriously. Iron Dog Studio has come up with some good ideas over the years, but it clings to them like a psycho ex who refuses to accept a break-up months after the event occurred and won't stop spam texting or banging on your door at 2 a.m.