Dark Forge

Dark Forge: Slot Overview

Hopefully, you are ready to rock, players, cos Swedish provider Slotmill certainly is, and we're not talking about the contemporary adult rock section in your nan's CD collection. No, no, those ready for some serious air guitar action will be doing so to old school thrash metal, accompanied by a 'demon-forged master' and his fellow demonic headbangers. Dark Forge is the name of the slot, and it bangs just as hard on the reels as off, with the aid of a doubling win multiplier, a couple of special symbols, and bonus rounds, in a game that doesn't strum power chords, it conjures them up from a literal volcano.

As touched on earlier, Dark Forge ain't got time for anyone who isn't prepared to rock, and to rock hard. If you're of the opinion that music attained perfection in the 1980s thrash metal era, then Dark Forge's diabolical game world will feel like a homecoming, musically at the least. Its base game is located in a subterranean space, deep in a volcano, where lava flows, flames flicker, and metallic items are crafted. Launch into the bonus round, and after breaking through a set of chains, a concert appears to be in full swing, where flames burn even brighter, and the crowd consists of arm-waving demons. This is the sort of slot that listens to one type of music and type only, and doesn't give a darn who agrees with its taste or not.

Dark Forge is played on a 4-5-5-5-4 gaming area with 2,000 ways to win. Slotmill has marked the volatility as 'very high' and made two RTP variants, with 96.02% the more generous one to go for. Stakes as low as $/€0.20 or as high as $/€100 may be chosen, and if Burst Mode is an option, it's an ultra-fast way of ploughing through a set number of spins.

Toughness rules the paytable where there are pointy J-A card ranks, hammers, maces, axes, swords, and demons. Landing 5 OAK winning combinations awards 0.25x if royals hit or 0.4x to 2x when premiums do. When wilds are in view, they substitute all symbols on the pay table. An Avalanche system is also in play, which removes winning symbols (except Gold symbols) and performs a symbol drop to replace them, continuing in this way until no new win is formed.

Dark Forge: Slot Features

Further features in Dark Forge include a progressive win multiplier, special symbols, free spins, super free spins, Xtra-Bet, and Fast Track feature buys.

Progressive Win Multiplier

Each Avalanche win doubles the win multiplier. The current active win multiplier is highlighted in the leftmost position on the Multiplier Meter above the reels. The multiplier resets at the start of each new spin. On any spin, special symbol versions may appear:

• Lightning Symbol - Any pay symbol can appear in a lightning version on the middle 3 reels. Any Lightning symbol part of a win removes one of the four upcoming multipliers from the Multiplier Meter. All removed multipliers are restored at the start of the next spin.
• Gold Symbol - Pay symbols can also land as a Gold symbol on the middle 3 reels. Any Gold symbol part of a win converts into a wild symbol.

Free Spins

Players win 8, 10, or 12 free spins when 3, 4, or 5 scatters land. During free spins, each step on the Multiplier Meter removed by a Lightning symbol remains removed for the duration of the bonus round. The Multiplier Meter resets to x1 at the start of each free spin, and free spins cannot be retriggered. If one of the three triggering scatters is a super scatter, then super free spins are awarded. It is the same as free spins, except that during this feature, all pay symbols landing on the middle reel will appear as Lightning or Gold symbols.

Xtra-Bet and Fast Track

Activating the Xtra-Bet increases the stake by 50% to make triggering free spins 2.6 times more likely. The Fast Track is where players can buy certain features. The Super Xtra-Bet costs 7x, and if free spins trigger, they will be super free spins, or at 40x, the Multiplier Meter Boost buys a game round with a random starting multiplier. The regular bonus costs 100x to buy, the super bonus 300x, or a 50/50 gamble that awards super free spins or nothing costs 150x to buy.

Dark Forge: Slot Verdict

Broadly speaking, on a very basic level, making stuff from a forge is pretty simple. You heat up the metal, bash it with a hammer, and voila, you've got a sword with which to vanquish your enemies. Dark Forge follows a similar principle. This is not a rudimentary release by any means, but its features have a certain brutal simplicity and are highly effective when they're beating the grid into the desired shape. Beating is a pretty apt word, too, given the theme, as is aggression, and Dark Forge is a slot that twists the volume up to 11 before snapping the knob off, with no regard to ear safety, whatsoever.

Naturally, one of the first thoughts in the review was mentally linking some of the mechanics to Yggdrasil's DoubleMax slots, which are also simple in some ways yet potentially potent. While the core concept might be straightforward, the win multiplier's exponential growth is what makes it so dangerous - aided by a couple of helpful special symbols. What's interesting is that the progressive win multiplier resets between free spins. Unlike in DoubleMax games, Raptor, for instance, the win multiplier does not reset until the bonus round is finished.

In Dark Forge, that same level of consistency might be gone, but here, players have potential up and down roller coaster rides on every single free spin. One of the key drivers in this regard, and what helps set Dark Forge apart, is the way multiplier values can be removed from the Multiplier Meter, thereby creating a shortcut to the chunkier values at the upper end of the scale. Doing it this way rather than the persistent DoubleMax way certainly hasn't had a detrimental effect on winning potential, which is listed as 20,000x the bet.

In practice, despite being a well-oiled machine, Dark Forge felt less like a carefully engineered system and more like a 'hope this hammer lands where it's supposed to' type of event, in a good way. It's not very often that such unapologetically metal-themed slots come along, and the heavy music, heavy theme, and heavy features create a relentless, hammer-on-anvil assault which goes to show you don't need to follow a complex, carefully thought-through plan when you've got enough raw, molten power swinging about the place.