Fear the Dark

Fear the Dark: Slot Overview

Suffer from a bit of nyctophobia, prefer to sleep with the hallway light on? If so, Fear the Dark from Hacksaw Gaming might not be the online slot to while away a few spins on a dark and stormy night. Then again, Fear the Dark is part of Hacksaw Gaming's Pocketz Series of slots which, so far, have been charming, cheerful games, though not without the ability to bite. Or, in the case of Fear the Dark to spook, all set alongside features such as Full Moon multipliers, Alone in the Dark free spins, and… Darkness Spins.

However, Fear the Dark is fearsome in the way an early Disney animation film might be. In other words, not terrifying at all, really, certainly nothing like Hand of Anubis from Hacksaw Gaming as a comparison. Its largely black and white background depicts a cemetery on a cloudy night, full of spiky guard rails, naked trees, and gravestones. Pale green ghosties drift past on a regular basis, and the quirky wee sound effects are spot on. Not overly terrifying, but a cute wee 'spooky' Pocketz slot to fire up on your mobile phone.

However, despite being a Pocketz slot, Fear the Dark runs just as happily on any other device and takes bets of 10 p/c to $/€100 per spin. It's a cluster paying grid slot, held on a 6x6 sized gaming panel, firing off a win when at least 5 matching symbols land adjacent to each other in horizontal or vertically connected positions. Winning symbols pop off the board, and others drop down to fill the spaces, meaning consecutive wins on the same spin are possible. With a 3 out of 5 rated medium volatile math model, the highest regular RTP value is 96.25%.

Cute and kinda spooky is one way of describing Fear the Dark's paytable, too. Its lows are 5 black and white stairs, a tombstone, cup, cube, and cross, while the high pays are a technicolour ghost, green head, pig, clown, and zombie. Landing a 5-of-a-kind win pays 0.1 to 1.5 times the bet, while at best, a 14+ sized cluster is worth 12.8 to 120 times the bet. Fear the Dark does not have a wild symbol; perhaps it got scared off?

Fear the Dark: Slot Features

What Fear the Dark does have are Full Moon multipliers, Alone in the Dark free spins, Darkness Spins, and four feature buy options. Here's what they do.

Full Moon

Landing the Moon Man scatter triggers Full Moon mode while activating 2 to 5 symbol multipliers, which appear on top of the grid and each multiplier being linked to a high-paying symbol. Possible multiplier values range from x2 to x100. Multipliers apply to all respective symbol wins while they are active. When no more wins occur on the grid, symbol multipliers are removed one at a time from left to right. For each multiplier removed, all instances of that symbol as well as low-pay symbols, are removed from the reels, triggering a drop. When all multipliers have had their turn being removed like this, Full Moon mode ends.

Alone in the Dark

Landing 3 or 4 FS scatter symbols in the base game triggers 10 or 15 Alone in the Dark free spins, respectively. During this round, there is a greater chance of landing Moon Man symbols than in the base game. Landing FS symbols awards +4 free spins each.

Darkness Spins

When all free spins have been used, the bonus round moves to Darkness Spins mode. Every time entering or resetting this mode, +2 additional spins are awarded. Before each Darkness Spin, the grid shrinks to 4x4, then to 2x2. Activating the Full Moon from this mode resets the grid back to 6x6. Also, landing an FS retrigger returns the grid to 6x6 for the rest of the current spin and takes players back to normal free spins, resetting Darkness Spins. When Darkness Spins mode ends without an FS retrigger or Full Moon, the feature ends.

Buy Bonus

Players keen to try taking on Fear the Dark in alternative ways are able to activate these options:

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins – 3x the bet where each spin is 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus game. Highly volatile with a max RTP of 96.41%.
• Moon Man FeatureSpins – 40x the bet where each spin guarantees to land at least 1 Moon Man symbol. Highly volatile with a max RTP of 96.25%.
• 10 Free Spins – 10 free spins for 100x the bet. Highly volatile with a max RTP of 96.23%.
• 15 Free Spins – 15 free spins for 150x the bet. Medium volatile with a max RTP of 96.25%.

Fear the Dark: Slot Verdict

From start to finish, Fear the Dark came across as a classic Hacksaw Gaming production. It hearkens back to the studio's earlier days when it was more focused on churning out unusual cutie pie slots, the likes of which no one else was really making. Om Nom, Cash Compass, Stick 'Em, you name it, they all had a distinctly unique Hacksaw feel to them. Later on, the studio branched off to find further success in bigger arenas but Fear the Dark goes to prove the studio's still got it when it comes to making charming, quirky Pocketz Series slots.

Not saying Fear the Dark is one of the studio's standouts, though. Once the warm fuzzies of the charming, not really spooky, cast, crew, and setting cools, what's left is fairly standard Hacksaw Gaming, err, gaming. Bag a multiplier or two, boost a win, collect your reward. The way Fear the Dark goes about doing all this is pretty neat, though, what with the Moon Man launching Moon Mode and so on. The Darkness Spins segment is quite unique too. Maybe it'll lead to an extension of the bonus round, maybe not, but kinda neat all the same.

In Fear the Dark's favour, Hacksaw Gaming has injected it with loads of enjoyable little touches, like the way winning symbols make their own noises, some quite amusing, the general old-school cartoon presentation, a pleasing pace, and a respectable max win figure of 5,000 times the stake. Fear the Dark might not be a Hacksaw Gaming classic, but for those happy to go to sleep with the lights off, it might make an agreeable distraction.