Halloween slot

Halloween slot is a Microgaming special with a license from Compass Films to give the player a taste of horror based upon the original 1978 slasher movie of the same name. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence it features a psychopathic Mike Meyers whom having already murdered his sister 15 years earlier, escapes from the sanatorium to wreak more bloodshed on the inhabitants of Haddonfield. The transparent reels sit over a backdrop of the verandah of the house of horrors and the chilling music of the movie forms our soundtrack with a nerve-jangling thud as the reels stop. Microgaming tend to do movie-based games quite well as we have seen with both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World and this appears to be of the same quality. The movie was a huge success for a low-budget release, so can our bankroll escape the attentions of mad Michael's knife or will it be cut to the bone?

On the reels...

Naturally we are provided with the main characters and see clips from the movie and hear soundbites when they create a win to add to the dramatic effect of the game. The Halloween slot has 50 paying lines and oddly has a 3-4-4-4-3 pattern of rows, but each spin the group of three 4-row reels can move to cover either the first or last three, or centre three which Microgaming call 'Wandering Reels'. This block has colossal character icons of 3x3 on it too which means a full screen can be won as on the 'normal' two reels all the icons can be stacked too.

Wilds appear stacked up to two rows high on all reels and pay the same as the top character, Lauren (played by Jamie Lee Curtis in her first ever film role!) at 10x bet for a full line of 5. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) pays 4x, Annie 3x, Linda 2.4x with symbols from the movie such as the revolver, knife, clown mask, telephone, book and knitting wool making the lower pays of 2x down to 1.4x bet for the full 5-of-a-kind. So there is some big win potential in the base game, but how about the bonus?

Wheel of Horror

3 bonus wheel scatters or more in view will open up a screen with a large wheel. It has cash values and you can progress in stages. You will see cash values of 2-10x bet and characters or the Boogeyman. Should you land on the Boogey man eventually, you'll get 15 Maple Leaves to pick from and reveal cash values, Boogeyman or Knife. The Knife provides an extra life for the Boogeyman stops the round - there are 11 cash values and you get a 20x bonus if you reveal them all without being killed off. The round isn't too bad, you can get up to 100x bet.

Should you land on one of the 4 characters, you will be given 9 free games and all the character icons on the reels, including the colossal 3x3 ones, will become the same as the one you have landed, thus increasing the chances of big wins up to 500x bet if you happen to land on Lauren, the best-paying one.

Our View...

Halloween slot has made great use of the movie's sound effects, phrases and music along with the real clips included. It's also refreshing to see an original non-cloned math model and format from Microgaming but there is one glaring problem which we noticed on their Tarzan game - the Bonus Wheel system where you aren't guaranteed to get free games, only a tedious pick-me game instead if you don't hit the free spins. It's a crying shame, because the game is good otherwise and although the volatility is quite low with a maximum win of around 500x bet and the RTP is a decent 96%, this wheel business detracts from it quite a bit in my view. I'd still be quite complimentary though about Halloween slot, definitely a treat rather than a trick...