Vampire Slots
Roundstone International gets a little heavier with its theme in Vampire Slots, an unimaginatively named real cash slot machine that has a dark and moody atmosphere. If you’ve played Witches and Wizards, you were probably expecting a light and jolly activity, with a few friendly looking monsters thrown in. But not here, oh no. In Vampires the focus is very much adult and gory, with the bonus symbol proof of that: it’s pulled out vampire fangs.
Mismatched Horror
This game could have been truly scary, if it had been given sound effects to match its aesthetic, but instead the title was given arcade sounds. Although retro, they’re hardly fitting of a slot machine so macabre in nature - when you win you want to hear screams and crashes of thunder, not synthesised noises.
What should have been an immersive and textured experience, is dumbed down and made a mockery of what it could have been, which will undoubtedly annoy avid horror fans. Having waited for the brand to give a meatier chiller theme, to get this isn’t as satisfying as it should be.
Cracking Skulls
It never ceases to amaze us how varied Roundstone manages to make their double or nothing features, given how typical the extra is now; what was once a novelty is now expected. In Vampire Slots you have two skulls instead of the pumpkins seen in Witches and Wizards, or the pinatas seen in Viva Mexico.
When you decide between the two, which is hardly taxing, either a x2 or LOSE will be shown to you, popping out of the open skulls. For saying how often the company have created these extras, they always manage to make the fail icon different in some way, sometimes it’s an X and others it’s a word.
As you’d expect, if you win you get to go again. We had a lucky streak for a time, but we knew it was time to check out before we got too big for our boots. Just a handy tip to bear in mind the next time you’re riding high on Lady Luck - call it quits before you lose everything you’ve just won.
Batty for You
This online game seemed to favour us more than others, for we launched the bonus feature with relative ease; when we did so, a wall of cartoon bats appeared. Before we even read to select one of them, we couldn’t help but notice how cutesy this part of the game was, and how it didn’t fit in with the rest.
Should you select a bat that gives you the bonus (you can get ones that say EXIT that end it all), you’ll be shown three tombstones; each of them has a multiplier, but only one of them will gift you with their prize. In our playthrough, there were wins of x5, x2 and x1… what a surprise we got the x2 multiplier.
Given the state of the rest of the game, this feature fits well, even though it has no solid entertainment factor.
Stolen Riches
When it comes to what you can win, cash wise, Vampire Slots is on the higher end of the payout spectrum. In many of the brand’s other titles, the prize fund has exceeded no more than 5,000 credits, but here users can reach 10,000 for a match of five bonus icons.
Even though this is cause for celebration, you might want to pause for a moment because the rest of the paytable, further down where the lower matches and icons are, is where you’ll find wins of only 5 coins. The jump is a startling one, so don’t expect to be rolling in dough come the end of your game.
Sink Your Teeth into this
Roundstone International might not have created a winner here, but it's still a juicy jugular you can sample on your killing spree across the 5 reels of these 9 winlines. We’d say that this is a playable game, but we wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.