Krampus is the exact opposite of Father Christmas. Santa Claus brings joy to children, but Krampus brings fear. This is a tradition that originated in Central Europe, where a half-goat, half-demon monster punishes misbehaving children. Basically, Father Christmas faxes his naughty list to Krampus, and the North Pole terrorist works to make sure the kids don’t stay on Saint Nick’s bad side.
While every other slot provider is releasing cheerful and festive Christmas-themed slots this December, Hacksaw Gaming appears to be celebrating Krampus with its new Dark Summoning slot instead.
Let’s start summoning
The slot has an interesting cascading reel feature that Hacksaw calls Super Cascade. The traditional cascading reel feature allows all symbols associated with a winning combination to be removed, allowing new symbols to take the empty spots. Dark Summoning slots take this one step further by removing all instances of symbols involved in a winning combination, regardless of whether they were included in the winning combination or not.
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The slot features red and blue wild symbols. Both act as the traditional wild symbol, replacing all other symbols except the scatter symbol to complete a winning combination. Blue Wilds can appear during the base game and the Rise of Salvation bonus game. Red wilds only appear in the Trial by Hellfire bonus game. Dark Summoning wilds sometimes come with multipliers that increase your win. Wild multipliers can appear in values of 2x, 3, 4x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x or 100x.
When the blue spell cross symbol appears on the reels, it is replaced by a wild symbol that may or may not appear with a multiplier along with 1 to 9 other symbols on the reels.
When three or more Unholy upside-down cross symbols appear on the reels, 10 Trail by Hellfire free spins are triggered. During Trail by Hellfire gameplay, all victory locations are marked as Hellfire. When an Unholy symbol lands on the reels, the Hellfire sequence is activated, converting the Unholy symbol and all symbols in the positions marked by Hellfire into wild symbols. All Hellfires are then removed from the reels.
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The Rise to Salvation free spins round of the slot is triggered by three Unholy symbols and an Order symbol that must be present when you collect the last Unholy symbol. During Rise to Salvation free spins, the symbol drop direction is reversed as the reels move upwards. When the Lost Soul symbol appears on the reels, it becomes sticky and rises up to fill the empty spot left by the cascading reels. When the Lost Souls symbol reaches the top of the reels, it rises. As each Lost Souls symbol rises, it awards a global multiplier or prize.
If you don’t want to wait for your lost soul to come to you, you can choose to purchase one of the slot’s free spins rounds.
Are Dark Sumoning slots the perfect Christmas escape?
Dark Summoning slots have a medium to high volatility, which means there are opportunities for small, consistent wins, but the gameplay leans more toward rare, big wins. The slot has a themed maximum multiplier of 10,666x, which can result in prizes of up to $213,320 when betting up to $20 per spin. The RTP of the slot is 96.35%.
In the kingdom of green and red, black slots are king. I love a good Christmas time. Don’t misunderstand. But I hate Christmas slots that are lazy reskins. And I know it doesn’t make financial sense to work on a whole new slot just for Christmas. But then just don’t do it. What I take away from this is that while most other slot providers are wrapping their older slots in Christmas decorations, I really respect Hacksaw for following in the direction of dark horror-themed slots. The Dark Summoning slot theme is beautifully executed with fantastic graphics backed by some really interesting and attractive bonus features. I give this a 9.5 out of 10. Hacksaw is killing it right now!
If you’re looking for other popular new slots from Hacksaw Gaming, you might want to try Immortal Desire and Densho.