Dracula's Castle slot review

Any vampire hunters amongst slots players will have a blast playing against the world's most beloved Transylvanian. Since Count Dracula is not a fan of silver (damages him), the vault in Dracula's Castle keeps cash money only and the players can take a bite of a decently sized chunk, which in precise terms is a max payout of $100,000.

Introduction

First things first, the game plays like a true 3x5 slot. But, it comes with only five paylines, which I find limiting and unnecessary for a modern slot. I mean, why would anyone take such a cool theme, give it a decent graphic design, and not include at least 10 ways to win?

Theme and Graphics

My first impression of the game was that it scares the bats out of you with the help of a perfect selection of nightmarish sound effects.

In terms of the graphic design, Dracula's Castle does well to hold your attention. The symbols tell a Dracula-centered story which involves a couple of she-vampires, tombstones, the castle and bats.

On the other hand, the hit frequency when playing medium or high volatility can serve you a true horror story. It's a pity because, in my opinion, the game could have fared much better had the maths been drawn to turn up more picture symbols instead of cards.

Features

Dracula's Castle isn't the most welcoming of places when it comes to extra features, but it does offer a couple of surprises.

• Expanding Wild

  The Dracula wild expands fully on the reel(s) when there's been a winning outcome. There is no limit to how many wilds can appear at a given time on the five reels.

• Win Multipliers

  The card symbols 9, 10, J and Q can populate the reel-set in blocks. If the same symbol covers three, four or five reels from left to right, the game rewards a win multiplier of x3, x4 and x5 in that order.

• Gamble Feature

  This isn't an extra feature but I should mention it since it can impact your win outcomes. Any win in the base game can be taken to the gambling table by pressing the left of the two blurry buttons that appear above the spin button. This is a game of guessing the card colour, where each correct guess doubles the winnings at that stage.

Bets and Payouts

The low-paying symbols are tombstone-like carvings of the royal cards, the ten and the nine. Regardless of the number of spins you make on Dracula's Castle, you are under the impression that the card symbols always dominate the reel-set.

The blonde and brunette she-vampires are the two most valuable symbols after the wild. With only two matching symbols on a payline, these can pay 2x and 4x your bet in that order. Five matching symbols can result in payouts of 125x and 250x.

Count Dracula, the wild symbol, dishes out the jackpot prize of a rather amazing 1000 times your bet.

Conclusion

Wazdan is a company that likes to strike a most positive impression amongst players, so they've ensured that you can win back the stake for hitting three of the lowest symbols on a payline. In other words, not a single symbol on the paytable pays less than the bet. The theoretical RTP is 96.56% which is above-average and the volatility is selectable from the button in the bottom right corner.

The payout amounts are impressive but, on the other hand, the game comes with only five paylines and doesn’t even offer a free spins bonus, so it will be a tough sell for a slot playing public that is keen on that key bonus feature.