Dreadworks

Dreadworks: Slot Overview

Amongst an industry flooded with fruit, jokers, and candy, the creative crew at Print Studios has the distinction of designing one of the more genuinely terrifying slots gamblers have the pleasure (or the repugnance) to put themselves through. The game was Darkness, and when one of the core aims of a slot is to summon Lucifer, you know you're about as far away from fruit, jokers, and candy as it gets. Whilst the studio is by no means fixated on the dark side of life, having also produced smile inducers like Pine of Plinko, the team is back on spine-chilling ground for another dimly lit borderline horror slot titled Dreadworks.

Dreadworks is held in Big Jack's Toy Factory, described as 'once a place of joy, now haunted and sinister where the remnants of forgotten playthings come to life.' Big Jack's Toy Factory really isn't the sort of place you want to find yourself on a dark and stormy night. Or in the daytime, for that matter. Where once it might have churned out loveable toys for kiddies, now, about all it's going to produce are nightmares. Inhabiting the sort of place Tool might have made its older music videos, the dolls here seem more than happy plunging a rusty blade into your back if you ever had the forsaken notion of hugging one of them, Chucky style. It is dark, though an in-game darkness meter can be adjusted to set the desired level of gloom. And doom. Player reaction may depend on their personal belief system or life experiences, but Dreadworks felt closer to uncomfortably creepy rather than the terrifying defiance of natural laws on display in Darkness.

Rumbling vertically between rusty pipes and whatnot is Dreadworks' 5-reel game grid crossed by 26 paylines. Wins begin on the leftmost reel, and if lucky, they'll pass through a stack of active SuperSpinner multipliers. Big Jack's math model is a highly volatile one, producing different RTPs depending on how players take on the game. When default betting 10 c to $/€50 per game round, the return value maxes out at 96.08%.

Dreadworks' low-pay symbols are the letters G, O, T, Y, A, followed by a spinning top, a teddy bear, and 3 doll character symbols. The rewards for hitting 5 matching low pays are 1-2 times the bet, while the highs pay 4x to 50x for 5-of-a-kind combinations. Wilds may land anywhere on the grid, substituting for everything except scatter symbols. Lines of 5 wilds pay 50x.

Dreadworks: Slot Features

Dreadworks' constituent parts include SuperSpinners, Jack-In-The-Box Wilds, a Big Jack Bonus, and Feature Bets.

Superspinners

Superspinners are the 14 multiplier values that appear between symbols on the reels. If a winline crosses a SuperSpinner and the SuperSpinner is to the left of a winning symbol, its value multiplies the win. Multiple multipliers are independently applied to the win one by one.

Jack–In-The-Box Wilds

Jack–In-The-Box Wilds symbols substitute for all other symbols bar scatters. Where they differ from regular wilds is that they randomly distribute a displayed values to boost SuperSpinners. As part of this feature, it is also possible for multiple mystery symbols to be added to the grid, possibly triggering new wins.

Big Jack Bonus

Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols anywhere on the grid awards 5, 7, or 9 free spins, respectively, triggering the Big Jack Bonus. When winning with low-pay symbols, an extra spin is awarded, and the corresponding low-pay symbol is removed for the rest of the bonus round. Removing all low-pay symbols triggers Big Jack and grants +4 free spins. Big Jack covers 3, 4, or 5 reels for the remainder of the feature, displaying randomly chosen pay symbols of the same matching type on each spin.

Feature Bet

The Feature Bet is where players may activate the Scatter Boost for 1.2x the bet per spin, the Enhanced Scatter Boost for 10x the bet per spin, or buy the Big Jack Bonus for 99x the bet.

Dreadworks: Slot Verdict

It goes without saying that Dreadworks won't be to all tastes. There is a reason why joyfully presented slots are so popular - people like them, they're jazzy, they're upbeat, and perhaps the finger-clicking optimism makes losing money easier to bear. But people, in general, also have a wide variety of preferences, and for those who like to experience chills down the spine while having a punt, then Dreadworks is one to try. There is apparently a link between horror, adrenaline, fight or flight, and all that, so maybe scary slots amplify the thrills?

On the whole, however, Dreadworks turned out to be quite good. The base game has a double whammy of SuperSpinners and Jack–In-The-Box Wilds keeping things moving, though eyes were firmly fixed on activating the Big Jack Bonus. There are crossovers between this bonus round and the Dark Ritual Bonus, except the task of hitting Dirge Wilds in the five designated spots is replaced by winning with low-pay symbols, and the all-wild Lucifer symbol has been swapped out for the mystery symbol elements of Big Jack. Wilds tend to have more utility than mystery symbol action, but both games have win caps of 20,000x the bet, so Dreadworks' mysteries can theoretically end favourably.

When looking at the bigger picture, there are quite a few crossovers in general between the two slots, meaning if Darkness floated your boat, there is a good chance Dreadworks will too. It has hints of other successful Print Studios slots, such as Royal Potato, so fans of the studio's work should be enticed by the thrills on offer in Jack–In-The-Box Wilds. The thrills might not be as terror-tinged as they were the first time around in Darkness, but they are exceptionally moodily enticing all the same.