Vlad's Castle Free Play in Demo Mode by Eyecon

Vlad's Castle review

Theme and Storyline

At first glance, it looks like Eyecon build Vlad’s Castle with the Francis Ford Coppola adaptation of Dracula in mind, as evidenced by Vlad’s ludicrous hairstyle in both properties.

The association between Dracula and Vlad the Impaler is by now a key part of pop-culture’s wider take on Bram Stoker’s villainous creation, and this game uses that to give us vampyre bats, frantic pale-faced maidens and plenty of Gothic underlighting.

If you are a fan of the Gothic tradition, this will fit right in with your tastes.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

The graphics are well put together and each symbol has a small animation when involved in a win. The background is deep red wallpaper lit by flickering candles. The win lines are all demarcated with a lovely thread of red light and the reel spins have a pleasing heft to them.

The sound is a fantastic bit of Gothic movie soundtrack pastiche which clashes somewhat with the rather standard sound effects on the reels. Well worth cranking the music up for that spooky atmosphere.

Gameplay

The main game is a five by three, twenty-five win line slot. You can opt to play anywhere from one to twenty-five win lines.

There are a few bonus features, described below, to keep you interested but no mini-games or gamble feature.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

This slot has two special symbols. The Wild symbol and the Scatter symbol.

The Wild symbol substitutes for all symbols except the Scatter symbol, and doubles the amount of any winnings when used to make a winning line.

The Wild symbol will also trigger a Free Spin bonus if you manage to land three or more. You win fifteen, twenty or twenty-five free spins for three, four or five Wilds respectively. During the Free Spin bonus prizes are tripled.

Free Spins can be retriggered up to fifteen times.

The Scatter symbol triggers the Portrait Feature if you get three or more symbols. For each Scatter in the winning combination, you get to click one portrait. Each portrait contains a randomised prize which is added to your winnings. The random prizes are up to 100x your bet per spin.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The return to player of this game is 95.39%. This is a bit low, coming in under the yardstick we use of about 96% for average.

The range of bets on the site we tested was $/£/€0.25 per spin up to a maximum of $/£/€125.00 per spin if you played every line. If you play just one win line you can go as low as $/£/€0.01 per spin.

The volatility of this game is high.

Conclusion

A fun and spooky take on the Dracula legend in slot form, Vlad’s Castle is pretty and comes with great music.

We like the high volatility and the movie reference theme, but the vig is a little high.

Overall we would not warn you off this one, but you might want to shop around a bit unless it really seems your bag.