Spooky Carnival

Spooky Carnival: Slot Overview

Ready to have your pants scared off, folks? If yes, then best give Red Tiger's online slot Spooky Carnival a miss. We joke, but really, Spooky Carnival isn't a particularly spooky slot despite using a fiendish pumpkin slash Halloween theme to colour its action. It's a pretty light game in several ways, really, but that could be okay; not everyone wants to experience The Exorcist levels of fright when gambling online. So, for a touch of the eerie as well as features such as pay symbols to wild conversions and free spins, don your costume and let the frights commence.

Spooky Carnival is held in a pretty odd place to hold a carnival, we'd have to say. Forget Rio and crowds of revellers cheering on big colourful floats as they travel down streets surrounded by flamboyant dancers. Spooky Carnival is held in a field full of pumpkins where it looks as though any carnival has been closed for the season or shut down a long time ago. Cobwebs adorn the active gaming area, joined on the screen by glowing pumpkin eyes, an unfriendly-looking raven, a waxy skull, and a witch's hat to help evoke a spooky-ish vibe. It brought back memories of Stakelogic's Voodoo Reels and Devil's Trap, as well as Pragmatic Play's Zombie Carnival, so if those slots floated your boat, maybe Spooky Carnival will too.

Spooky Carnival is played on a 5x3 gaming panel with 10 paylines. A winning combination is created when matching symbols land along one of the paylines across adjacent reels, beginning from the leftmost side. It's a medium volatile game, packing meagre max win numbers and a default RTP of 95.68%. To get your ticket to the carnival, pick a bet of 10 p/c to $/€60 per spin and away we go.

As its symbols, Spooky Carnival has nine regular pays – 5 low and 4 high. The lows are spectrally designed 10-A card ranks, while the highs are a blue potion bottle, a cauldron, a hammer, and a gooey apple. Should a five-of-a-kind win hit, made up of low pays, players collect a prize worth 1.2 to 4 times their stake, rising to 6 to 20 times the bet when consisting of the high pay symbols. A Jack-o-lantern appears on the wild symbol, present on all reels. If a line of 5 wilds hit, the reward is 20 times the bet, or wilds can be used to substitute for any regular pay symbol.

Spooky Carnival: Slot Features

Pay symbols can even turn into wilds via the Wild & Spooky Coin feature, available in the base game and in the free spins bonus round.

Wild & Spooky Coin

Wilds with Spooky Coins may land on any spin. Each coin from each wild is collected on the progress bar located above the reels. The progress bar has spaces to store 5 coins. When 5 coins are collected, a random symbol type on the next spin will be swapped for wild symbols. At random, an extra symbol type may also be swapped for wilds. If more coins than the progress bar are collected, the extra coins are collected but appear on the progress bar on the next spin.

Free Spins

Hitting 3 scatters on reels 1, 3, and 5 triggers 10 free spins. Scatters do not appear during the free spins bonus round. If any Spooky Coins are stored on the progress bar on the triggering spin, they are carried over to the free spins round. During free spins, Spooky Coins are collected in the same way as the base game, but all symbol types swapped for wilds continue swapping on each spin for the duration of the free spins feature. In addition, filling the progress bar awards +3 free spins. If the progress bar is filled when no more free spins remain, the round continues, and the next free spin is deducted from the awarded bonus spins. Also, if any Spooky Coins are stored after the last free spins, they transfer over to the base game.

Spooky Carnival: Slot Verdict

Gotta come clean and say despite looking rather vibrant, Spooky Carnival didn't make a major impression. It was a struggle to think of much to say about Spooky Carnival, really. In atmosphere, it's close to some of the previously mentioned slots while not being super scary, probably even if played at midnight with all the lights in the house turned off. Due to the visuals, Spooky Carnival might make more sense being played around Halloween, perhaps, to get into the mood. Not that there is anything stopping players from picking the game up at other times of the year, of course.

One of Spooky Carnival's main highlights is the way symbols swapped for wilds persist throughout the free spins bonus round. You get a taste of this in the base game when enough Spooky Coins have been collected to do a symbol to wild swap on the following spin. Needless to say, bet levels are saved, so you can't collect 5 coins and then cunningly increase the bet to see what might unfold on the next spin. But yeah, free spins are where it's at since there is potentially so much more symbol swapping going on. Not hugely effective, however, or at least not as effective as you might think. Perhaps because of the low number of paylines and the modest symbol values, but the most Spooky Carnival can shoot off on its best day is 1,530.1x the bet.

It's funny, one moment, we're reviewing a Red Tiger heavyweight like Judgement Day Megaways, the next, we've got a game like Spooky Carnival coming our way. Ah well, Red Tiger has certainly proven it can cater for gamblers all over the spectrum, so for those who prefer smaller, lighter, not really frightening games, then Spooky Carnival could be of interest. Otherwise, its central good idea may come across as hampered by weak numbers.