Haunted House Slots
Daggers, caskets, spooky candles, crucifixes and cloves of garlic. It can only mean one thing (or a whole bunch of things) – Haunted House, the 3-reel video slot from the Playtech software platform. This ghostly casino game is not for the faint of heart, but if you can hold your nerve, you could end up winning a prize that makes you scream – not the kind of ear-piercing wail you might issue if confronted by Dracula, but a giddy scream of delight! The slot is available to play in both free mode and cash mode at several online casinos.
Crossing the threshold
As stated, Haunted House has just three reels and five pay-lines. The reels are situated in the foreground of a darkened castle, with one red light shining from a high tower. Behind the castle, the moon glows white, and red-eyed bats hover in the sky while a witch rides her broomstick across the empyrean.
The minimum coin denomination is 0.01, for a bet of 0.05, while the maximum is 5, for a bet of 25. Although there are five lines, you can choose to play on a single line if you wish. The game’s theoretical return-to-player percentage is 96.71.
There’s a tab recording your Bet to the left of the reels, and one on the right recording Wins. Rather than click into the pay-table, players can view it above the reels instead.
As ever, there’s a difference between the line bet and total bet. The line bet shows how much you’re wagering on a single payline; the total bet reveals how much you’re dispensing with in this game round. The pay-outs displayed in the pay-table are multiplied not by the line bet, but by the coin size. If you hit winning combinations on more than a single payline, the winnings for each line are added together.
Haunted as hell
The symbols in Haunted House are the kind you might stumble across in a haunted house strung with cobwebs. There is a golden chalice, a burning candle, a dagger, garlic bulbs, a casket and a crucifix. All in all, there are 12 pay-outs to shoot for. The symbols are rendered cartoon-style, though this only adds to the cult appeal of the game. You certainly wouldn’t bother to play Haunted House if out-of-this-world graphics were your priority. There are, however, some quirky, haunting sound effects to augment the gameplay.
Disappointingly, Haunted House does not offer any special features. That means no free spins, no progressive, no randomly awarded wins, no multiplier, no bonus game and certainly no wild or scatter symbols. But don’t be haunted by this news: after all, Haunted House has plenty of well-paying symbols.
The all-important garlic clove should come in handy if you’re ever confronted by a blood-sucking vampire (i.e. a vampire), but in this particular Haunted House, the garlic performs another function. The cloves act as cherries, in that they are linked with pay-outs for modest combinations. If you hit one, for instance, you’ll win five credits; if you land two, it’s 25.
Those who can find three garlic cloves will win the top prize, though it all depends upon which payline the cloves occupy. For example, three garlics on line one pays 1,000, three on the second pays 1,200 and three on the third grants 1,400. The sum is 1,600 for three on line four and 1,800 coins for a combination on the fifth line.
Among the regular symbols, the best to aim for is the crucifix which pays 300 for a matching combination of three. Caskets pay 200, daggers 100, chalices 75 and candles 50. There are no pay-outs for two matching symbols except in the case of the garlic clove.
A scary slot
Setting aside the lack of bonus features – and man, oh man, there’s a startling lack of them – Haunted House is a decent slot game. The theme is enjoyable, the disturbing sound effects make the gameplay more entertaining and there are plenty of lucrative symbols to aim for.
Haunted House is essentially a classic video slot, though it’d certainly be nice if some free spins or bonus icons were included. Ah, well. Perhaps the good folk at Playtech will do the right thing and get to work on a sequel?
