Hellapenos

Hellape?os: Slot Overview

Have you ever known someone who goes to restaurants with fiery reputations, but the food on the menu is just never hot enough for them? Like, the chef could dump in every known spice from here to Kolkata, and it wouldn't be enough, even if their cheeks had turned bright red and beads of sweat were pouring off their brow. Anyway, players who like it hot might be intrigued by Hellape?os, a scorching chilli-laden online slot from Swedish developer Thunderkick. As the name suggests, Hellape?os takes place in the bowels of the earth, hell, hades, the devil's domain, and delivers gaming devices such as multiplier wilds, expanding multiplier wilds, and free spins.

Players might find themselves in the devil's domain when loading up Hellape?os, but Thunderkick has presented the realm where damned souls are tormented for eternity in a snazzy, fun-filled way. As if being prodded by tridents or ripped apart by fiends for infinity isn't so bad. Well, this hell's got a bar, at least, where weary entities can unwind after a hard day of torturing or being tortured and down a few suds. Not bad tunes in this afterlife either. The track has a toe-tapping disco meets The Doors type of organ jamming thing going on.

To partake of the spicy surroundings, players may choose a stake of 10 c to $/€100 per spin. A 5-reel gaming panel is where Hellape?os' action takes place, and it's been arranged in a 3-3-4-4-4 formation. It pays when matching symbols land on at least 3 consecutive reels starting from the leftmost side of the grid. However, symbols must be connected, and diagonal connections are allowed, giving 100 connecting paylines. Highly volatile, players can expect a default RTP of 96.19% when betting regularly or 96.31% when buying the free spins round.

Ten through Ace card ranks are Hellape?os' low pay symbols, awarding 0.6 to 1 times the bet for a 5-of-a-kind hit. Then there are blue, purple, green, and yellow bottles, plus a doggy/bat character as the high pays. Hitting a 5 high pay symbol win awards 1.5 to 5 times the bet. Central to the gameplay are the multiplier wild symbols (value x2) which substitute for all regular paying symbols. Wins on a connected payline that includes one or more multiplier wilds are multiplied by the multipliers. The maximum total multiplier from multiplier wild symbols forming part of a single payline is x8 – x2x2x2.

Hellape?os: Slot Features

Other features adding flavour to Hellape?os are random wilds, Expanding Devil symbols, a free spins bonus game, and a bonus buy.

Random Wilds

Symbols on the two leftmost reels are stacked in groups of 2 to 5. If the two leftmost reels display the same identical symbol sets, then 1 to 3 multiplier wild symbols are randomly placed on reels 3 to 5.

Expanding Devil Symbol

The Expanding Devil symbol may appear on reels 3 to 5 – a maximum of 1 per reel. If an Expanding Devil symbol is part of a winning combination, it expands to cover the entire reel and substitutes for all symbols except scatters. It does not act as a wild if it does not expand. If an Expanding Devil symbol expands through one or two multiplier wild symbols, it turns into a multiplier with a value of x2, which is applied to the whole reel. If a winning combination contains more than one Expanding Devil symbol with a multiplier, the multiplier values are multiplied together then applied to the win. The total multiplier from multiplier wild symbols forming part of a single pay line ranges from x2 to x64.

Bonus Game

Landing 3 scatters on reels 3, 4 and 5 triggers 7 free spins. In free spins, when Expanding Devil symbols land on reels 3 to 5, they activate that reel for the rest of the round and award +3 spins, up to a maximum of +9 total (one retrigger per reel). Activated reels place an Expanding Devil symbol on each spin. If the Expanding Devil symbol is part of a win, the symbol expands to cover the whole reel, making it wild. It does not act as a wild if not expanded.

Buy Feature

Clicking the buy feature button is where players can buy 7 free spins for the cost of 70 times their bet.

Hellape?os: Slot Verdict

First off, and something that is a common trait in Thunderkick slots, Hellape?os is a finely presented game, rich in visual detail and creative audio. Hellish environments show up in online slots from time to time, competing with more celestial stuff like, say, Mt Olympus, where studios can go the scary route the way Yggdrasil Gaming did in Devour the Weak or do the airier lighter-hearted treatment as seen in a game like Demon Pots or Hellvis Wild from Pragmatic Play and Reel Kingdom. Hellape?os certainly isn't a scary entry and gives players into this sort of thing a jazzy space to inhabit while hitting spin to set its somewhat unorthodox aligned reels and ways in motion.

The features were less unusual, some of them at least. Particularly, the Expanding Devil symbols which brought back memories of the sort of mechanical tricks Hacksaw Gaming has been performing. One example of Hacksaw Gaming's expanding wilds through multipliers type thing is RIP City (including the opening mouth effect), but others could be mentioned here, Stormforged, for instance. One thing about the related Hacksaw Gaming slots is that individual multiplier values can max out at x200, whereas in Hellape?os combined, x64 is as good as it gets. Overall winning potential in Hellape?os is about half/less than half than its Hacksaw counterparts as well at 5,000x the bet, so it's not as highly a tuned performance vehicle for those who believe bigger is better.

Not that Hellape?os is aiming to be the biggest expanding wild multiplier game on the block. Instead, Hellape?os gave Thunderkick a chance to show it can design a hellishly themed slot with an expanding wild multiplier feature as stylishly as anyone.