Haunted Hallows review

Theme and Storyline

It’s Halloween all year round in this spooky slot from Eyecon.

With a graveyard for its background and reels decorated with ghosts, Frankenstein’s monster, and skulls as candle holders, Haunted Hallows is a creepy cartoon delight.

If you enjoy a good scare and want to thrill at something other than gambling itself, this slot has built a little world for you.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

The ghouls and spooks on the reels are given a lot of character by their Saturday afternoon cartoon style. This is backed up with animations that loop even when the symbols are not part of a winning combo – with whole new animations for when they are.

The sound design in the base game is a little bland. There is no background music, although the spin and win sounds are cute and on theme even if they are a little sparse.

The bonus games come with a fun Halloween track though, which works well and means most players will benefit from keeping the sound on.

Gameplay

The gameplay is pretty straightforward. The base game is a three reel by three row slot with up to nine configurable win lines.

There’s a double or nothing minigame that players can use to gamble their winnings spin by spin. And for the lucky, there are two separate bonus games (detailed below).

Overall, this is plenty of pizazz for a slot machine that is so small.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The Wild symbol substitutes for all symbols except the Jack O’Lantern Scatter symbols and the Candy Scatter symbols. These Scatters are responsible for triggering the pair of spooky bonuses that Haunted Hallows offers.

Landing three or more Jack O’Lantern Scatter symbols anywhere on the reels triggers a picking game in which pumpkins pop up in a garden, hiding a prize of between one and one-hundred and eleven times the bet per spin each. The player is allowed to pick three pumpkins and is awarded the prizes that are underneath each of those three pumpkins.

Three or more Candy Scatter symbols anywhere on the reels pays out an amount equal to the players bet per spin. They will also trigger eight free spins.

Free spins can be retriggered up to 15 times. This, combined with the 3x multiplier that is applied to all wins during the free spins, can amount to pretty big wins, although the free spins seem to be triggered and retriggered quite rarely.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The return to player of Haunted Hallows is an absolutely horrifying 90.74%. We tend to treat roughly 96% as average with anything more than a percentage point in either direction making a game tip over into very good or very bad territory.

This is a full five and a quarter percentage points below our "average".

Haunted Hallows is listed by Eyecon as a high volatility game. Usually, this would make it a good match for our preferred slot machine strategies, but with an RTP that low this game is not worth it.

The range of bets on the site we tested ran from a minimum bet per spin of $/£/€0.01 for a single win line up to a maximum of $/£/€45.00 per spin for 9 paylines.

Conclusion

Haunted Hallows is a lovely little slot in so many ways. The graphics are cute, the animations varied, the soundtrack well-chosen (if a little thin on the ground), and there is plenty of gameplay crammed into a small package here.

Unfortunately, Haunted Hallows has one major, deal-breaking flaw: it’s RTP. At just 90.74%, this slot is pocketing almost one in every ten dollars wagered on it.

That’s too high a price for us.