Love Nest

Love Nest: Slot Overview

Funny, you often see your neighbours going about their lives, off to work in the morning, home at night, walking the dog on the weekend, and they can seem friendly enough on the surface, but what they get up to in the privacy of their own homes, who can say? Most likely the vast majority are regular law-abiding citizens just trying to make their way through life. Then there are exceptions, such as the lady you're about to meet in developer Shady Lady's online slot Love Nest. From the title, it might sound like a tale of romance, but load the game, and any thoughts of flowers, hearts, or valentines are soon violently dashed to pieces to make way for an insidious horror show of pain, despair, and suffering.

If you like stories with happy endings, then Love Nest might not be the game for you. It takes place in an unnamed suburb in the year 1983, where a woman with a perfect smile and a beautiful house has men of all kinds lining up at her door. The thing is, the neighbours might see the men enter, but they never seem to see them leave. The reason for that is, well, they end up in boxes buried deep underground where they moulder away to nothing or are tormented by a beast called The Critter. The woman, too, isn't as beautiful as she is made out to be, because under the smiling facade, resides a savage beast with a lust for violence. She appears to be part lady, part spider, and there is nothing she likes better than trapping men in her web, then doing nasty, nasty things to them. So, comedy this isn't; in fact, Love Nest was one of the more squeamish slots to come along in a while.

The gaming area is a 5x5 grid, with 3,125 ways to win. Winning symbols vanish from view and are replaced by symbols cascading downwards. If a new win is created, the cascade feature triggers again. Players looking to take this highly volatile game on can wager $/€0.10 to $/€50 per spin, while the default RTP clocks in at 96.1%.

Love Nest's pay symbols are zip ties, tape, pill bottles and hammers as the low pays, then four ugg body parts as the high pays. Lows award 0.4x to 0.6x for a 5 OAK winning combination, while the high pays award 0.8x to 1.5x for a 5-of-a-kind hit. Wilds substitute for all of the regular paying symbols.

Love Nest: Slot Features

Buried in the nest are The Critter, Meat Eating Vortexes, Multiplier Moths, a global multiplier, boxes, Ground Tremors, bonus rounds, super bonus rounds, and store buys.

The Critter

One Critter can appear on any spin or cascade when there are no more wins. When there is a Buried Box present, The Critter carves its way towards it. The Critter may stop before reaching it, though it still swallows each thing on its path. When there is no box present, it carves a random path and then just leaves. Each high-pay body part it swallows creates a Meat Eating Vortex. Low value symbols and wilds do not. If The Critter reaches the box, it opens it. The Critter carves over normal symbols but walks over scatters.

Meat Eating Vortexes & Multiplier Moths

When created by The Critter, Meat Eating Vortexes suck in symbols above them on the reel, though not scatters or Buried Boxes. The vortex then draws in 1 to 50 extra meat symbols. Each high-value body part symbol and every meat symbol sucked in becomes a Multiplier Moth, each one adding +1 to the global multiplier. Low symbols do not contribute. A vortex can also spawn 1 to 3 Big Red Moths. Each one of these doubles the global multiplier. The global multiplier multiplies each win and resets on each new base game spin.

Buried Boxes

Buried Boxes are 1-4 cells in size and always land on the bottom row. Only one box can land at a time. Sealed boxes cannot form part of a win. Each cell The Critter reaches inside the box turns wild. Cells it can't reach stay sealed and remain blocking. The Critter can only carve one way through on the widest boxes. When entering from an end, the whole box opens; if entering from the middle, it takes one side only. A box may carry up to 10 Moths, though on rare occasions 50 Moths, or a Red Moth. If The Critter reaches a Buried Box, any Moths on it are awarded to the global multiplier.

Ground Tremor

The Ground Tremor can occur in any game phase. It starts on the bottom row, then moves upwards to potentially include all rows. Affected rows collapse, removing symbols except Buried Boxes and scatters. Gaps are filled by a cascade.

Bonus & Super Bonus

Landing 3 scatters triggers the bonus round, while 4 scatters award the super bonus. A Buried Box is held at the bottom of the grid, and reels spin over it. The bonus awards 3 spins; the super bonus awards 5 spins. In that time, if The Critter opens the box, then the spin count resets, and a fresh box drops on the following spin. The bonus ends when a box is not opened within its spins. The global multiplier does not reset during any bonus rounds.

The Store

The Store has the Bonus Boost for 1.5x, boosting the chance of triggering the bonus by 237%, the Big Bonus Boost for 5x, where the chance is boosted by 1,174%, and the Critter Boost for 10x, which guarantees a Critter on each spin. Buys include the bonus, super bonus, bronze bonus, silver bonus, and gold bonus for 84x, 300x, 129x, 347x, or 1,596x the stake. Then there are highlight reels where 79x, 196x, and 292x the stake buys the best result from 100, 300, and 500 spins. Lastly there are four Loot Boxes costing 186x to 950x the bet.

Love Nest: Slot Verdict

The expectations of what a slot named Love Nest was going to be like were smashed by a reality that was truly unforeseen. Some players may have been hoping for romance, affection, perhaps even a few hearts and roses, but Shady Lady had other ideas. Instead, Love Nest weaves a grotesque suburban nightmare where the picket-fence dream conceals something a lot more sinister. Cruise down this street and instead of a monotonous patch of well-tended lawns where nothing really happens, resides a half-woman, half-beast with a taste for trapping unsuspecting men and burying them in boxes. Shady Lady's not one to shy away from unsettling subject matter, and Love Nest takes a stronger stomach to handle than most.

As such, the topic won't be for all gamblers, which is possibly an issue since the theme makes up so much of the Love Nest experience. If you're not comfortable watching people have their fingers cut off one by one, or seeing critters reveal people crammed into boxes, then maybe this blood fest is not the right slot. For players who do like their slots on the darker side of the spectrum, Love Nest should be right up their alley. The features have been completely embedded into the theme, and require a few parts to converge to really get the best out of Love Nest. Namely, landing a Buried Box, getting a Critter, then hoping Meat Eating Vortexes and Multiplier Moths are produced by them. The ultimate goal is hitting decent symbol wins, boosted by a big global multiplier, which is more likely to occur in the free spins rounds. That phase might be quite intense, since players are granted a set number of spins to reveal a Critter, open a box, then reset the count. Do so, and the ball keeps rolling. Fail, and it's lights out… On the bonus, not on players, that is.

Love Nest is a game that worms its way into the imagination and lays some very strange eggs there. Given the severity of the theme, it could prove to be very polarising, with some gamblers embracing the violent weirdness of the whole thing, while sick rises in the oesophagus of players who just can't stomach it. With 20,000x the bet up for grabs, there are sizable rewards on offer for lucky players willing to brave the demented experiment Shady Lady has concocted. Just brace for a twisted ride through suburban madness where nightmares may be the consolation prize.