Slot of the Month – October 2018

Our Slot of the Month for October is Halloween Jack by NetEnt, released nicely in time for Halloween.

How To Play Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack is a 20 line slot with a classic 5x3 reels array.  The atmospheric Halloween theming is beautifully done and the symbols include ravens, bats and other spooky characters.

Like many other NetEnt slots Halloween Jack is built around a single compelling gimmick and that is the Walking Wild - a suitably scary Jack-O-Lantern.  When a wild appears, a re-spin awarded during which the wild moves one reel to the left.  This continues until there are no wilds on the reels (with one final re-spin after the last wild walks off the left hand end) and can produce a nice cascade of wins, especially if another wild shows up while the first one is still walking.  Also, all wins that include a wild have an x 3 multiplier.

The Walking Wilds gimmick provides plenty of entertainment in the base game but it's in the bonus round that it really comes into its own.

The bonus round in Halloween Jack consists of 10 free spins, triggered by 3 or more casket scatters.  If 3 or more scatters turn up during the free spins (unlikely as it can take hundreds of spins to trigger the bonus round in the first place) another 5 free spins are added.

During the free spins, Lantern symbols are added to reel 5.  Whenever a Lantern symbol appears, it is added to the collection at the right hand side of the play area.  Collect enough Lantern symbols and you'll unlock additional wilds - all of which are also Walking Wilds - for the remaining free spins.

• 3 Lanterns unlock the Stacked Hell Hound Wild which is 2 symbols high
• 6 Lanterns unlock the Stacked Jack-O-Lantern Wild which is 3 symbols high
• 9 Lanterns unlock the Expanding Death Reaper Wild.

Collecting Lanterns is made easier by having Walking Wilds on the reels, as they can turn up during the re-spins.  So the more of them you collect, the easier it gets to collect the rest.

This means that the bonus round has the potential to build up to a really exciting crescendo.  Most of the time, you won't get enough Lantern symbols early enough on in the bonus round for it to amount to anything much, but if you do manage to collect one or more of the better wilds quickly the bonus round can go on for a long time (as several Walking Wilds can be active at a time) and end with a substantial win.

The mobile version looks even better than the desktop - the glowing Jack-O-Lanterns really stand out.

Halloween Jack has an RTP of 96.29% but it is high variance so much of this is tied up in the bonus round.  Wins are not uncommon in the base game but unless you get lucky with multiple walking wilds and/or 5 of a kind they are usually very small (3 of a kind pays 3 - 20x line bet).  If you like the excitement of a high variance slot you may find plenty here to entertain you even after Halloween is over (or you could always return to the ancestral game, Jack and the Beanstalk).

Where To Play Halloween Jack