Wicked Tales: Dark Red

Wander into the dark forest of Ravenmire as you relive the fabled fairy tale on the slot from Microgaming. Designed in collaboration with Triple Edge Studios, the game comes with a sinister twist to create a suspenseful slotting journey. More twists to the original fairytale will see little red riding hood appearing as a beautiful young lady, the wolf turning into a vampire and the forest being called Ravenmire. On top of a bonus game with three options, the slot features their signature game window with Wandering Reels, a group of three reels that spin together and move randomly to one of three positions in every round. With four instead of three rows, they contain 3×3 jumbo symbols, providing a higher chance of landing big wins of up to 5,000x your stake in a single bonus round.

Slot Details

Wicked Tales: Dark Red is a video slot with five reels, three rows and 25 fixed pay lines. Wandering into the Ravenmire forest on desktop, mobile or tablet will be charged with 0.25 to 200 coins. The RTP of this medium variance game is set at 96.10%. Use AutoPlay to choose from 10 to 100 spins to be played consecutively without interruption.

Released just in time for Halloween, the studio turned the famed Red Riding Hood fairy tale into a horror themed game. A male vampire instead of the old granny is luring the innocent girl into the forest of Ravenmire, which serves as the fitting background to the five slot reels. The small house from the original tale can be seen on the right of the game window. A dark soundtrack with dramatic crescendos on winning spins completes a well-designed game.

Open the game to find 10 regular pay symbols, one wild symbol and a scatter. The low-end consists of artistic Js to As, while on the medium level, they are red candles and a bag of gold coins. The four premium symbols are intricately designed tile with a pendant, a wolf, the male vampire and Red Riding Hood. The slot logo is the wild and top-paying symbol. Pays for a single five of a kind range from 1.20 to 20x your bet. The scatters are a full moon, with minimum three needed to trigger the bonus game.

Wandering Reels Explained

The signature feature of Triple Edge Studios is the Wandering Reels, which was first seen on their Halloween slot. A block of three reels with four rows spin together in every round while the bloc moves randomly to one of three positions on the game window – left, middle and right. The three connected reels contain jumbo symbols in the size of 3×3 symbols, providing more potential to hit big wins.

The Wolf’s Wheel Bonus Game

Hitting three moon scatters will trigger the Wolf’s Bonus Wheel which guarantees one of the two features on the slot – The Forest of Fortune Pick Bonus or the free spins round. The wheel contains coins wins totalling 20x the stake as well as the two features. Players will turn the wheel and collect coin wins until it stops on one of the two features.

• The Forest of Fortune Pick Bonus – pick-and-click game with a number of bags that contain up to 10 hidden coin wins from 1x to 5x the total stake, an axe that will award an extra life and a wolf that will end the game. After each successful pick the win multiplier will increase by x1, up to x10 when all 10 coin win bags are successfully picked. The final multiplier will be applied to the total bonus round winnings. A special reward of 20x the total stake is awarded when all 10 bags are found but will not be multiplied.
• Free Spins – nine free spins are triggered when the wheel stops on a character pay symbol, which cannot be retriggered. All premium symbols will turn into the triggering symbol for the duration of the round.

Final Verdict

If there ever was an exact clone of last year’s contribution to the Halloween season, then Wicked Tales: Dark Red is the perfect example. One year earlier, Microgaming released Halloween which is using the same pay mechanic and has similar features. While Dark Red looks stunning and relays the theme perfectly, it would have been much better if Microgaming would have given it different types of bonus rounds. The maximum win potential is also overstated as you would need to hit a full screen of slot log symbols on each of the 9 free spins to achieve the feat, not a realistic scenario.

Bonuses

Winners

Comments

Remember, you can play Wicked Tales: Dark Red here