Hell Butcher

Hell Butcher: Slot Overview

Have you ever been fed up with the usual circle of acquaintances and, say, made a wardrobe change and visited a macabre fetish club to meet a new bunch of people? No? It seems as though software provider Pragmatic Play has, as it explores a new and more torturous side of its personality. Out of this Jungian exploration of the soul has emerged Hell Butcher, a slot built on a wild multiplier mechanic that cranks up the intensity by grabbing values from a trail, paired with a rather vicious delivery method. Pragmatic Play has bravely stepped out of its comfort zone to meet players who prefer to linger outside the mainstream and revel in the grotesque.

Enter Hell Butcher, and you enter a world where the local butcher certainly does not serve vegan options. The location sits somewhere between fire, brimstone and apocalyptic afterlife in a pit. Lava abounds, bubbling away in the background, while skulls and scary decor add to the (un)welcoming ambience. Four panic-stricken individuals below the reels reinforce this buffet of nightmares, which has an unusual obsession with eyeballs. In short, Hell Butcher makes for a delightful little vacation spot, if your idea of vacation involves an eternity of torture, pain, and razor-sharp cutting items.

Hell Butcher is a cluster pays slot, creating winning combinations when 5 or more matching symbols land adjacent to each other on a 6x6 grid. Pragmatic Play has developed a medium volatile math model to run the game (and a fairly decent max win frequency), where the max RTP comes in at 96.55%. It has also developed a lot of additional betting options to go with a base stake range of $/€0.20 to $/€240.

From the bottom of the pay table on up, we find shackles, eyeball rings, slashers, mugs of blood, skulls, hearts, and cauldrons of eyeballs. Hitting five matching symbols creates a win worth 0.2x to 1x the bet, rising to a value of 20x to 150x when 15+ matching symbols form a win. Wild symbols appear in different types, and all are able to substitute for regular paying symbols.

Hell Butcher: Slot Features

The butchering is conducted using tumbles, wild multipliers, free spins filled with various wild symbols, and a stack of ante bets, Super Spins, and feature buys.

Tumbles & Wild Multiplier

The tumble mechanic causes winning symbols to disappear after they have paid. Gaps left on the grid are filled by symbols tumbling down, and if a new win is formed, the tumble feature triggers again. Moreover, in the base game, multipliers of x2, x4, x8, and x16 can be seen beneath the reels. When a wild hits, it can randomly take one of the four multipliers. The multiplier taken is replaced by a new multiplier with a value double the highest one currently on the screen, up to x512. The multiplier is applied to all wins the wild is part of. If more multipliers are part of the same win, they add to each other. At the end of tumbles, the multipliers under the grid reset.

Scatters

Three types of scatters may land in the game. If 3 or more scatters hit, a standard free spins round is triggered. If at least 2 scatters and a No Miss Scatter hit, free spins with the No Miss Free Spins modifier are awarded. If 2+ scatters and a Madness Scatter hit, free spins with the Madness modifier trigger. If a No Miss scatter and a Madness scatter land with at least 1 regular scatter hit, free spins trigger with the No Miss Madness modifier.

Free Spins

Hitting 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters of any kind awards 12, 15, 20, or 30 free spins, respectively. This same number of free spins is retriggered should 3-6 scatters land during the round. The various wild symbols available during free spins are these:

• No Miss Wild - Can only land in free spins with the No Miss modifier. When this wild hits, it is guaranteed to take a random multiplier from the multiplier trail.
• Butcher Wild - Can only land in standard free spins or free spins with the Madness modifier. When it hits, if it randomly takes a multiplier, that multiplier cannot appear anymore in the multiplier trail for the remainder of the round.
• No Miss Butcher Wild - Can only land during free spins with both the No Miss and Madness modifiers. When this wild hits, it is guaranteed to take a multiplier from the trail, and that multiplier cannot appear under the reels for the rest of the round.

If the feature was triggered with the No Miss modifier active, all wilds that hit during it are No Miss Wilds. If it was triggered with the Madness modifier, all wilds that hit are Butcher Wilds. Lastly, if the round is triggered with both No Miss and Madness modifiers, all wilds that hit are No Miss Butcher Wild symbols.

Special Bets & Feature Buys

Hell Butcher is packed with purchase options. Ante bets range from 4x to 10x the stake, while Super Spins cost between 5x and 500x the bet depending on the feature. Players can also buy the bonus directly, with standard free spins costing 100x, the No Miss or Madness free spins costing 300x, and No Miss Madness free spins costing 750x the bet.

Hell Butcher: Slot Verdict

When Hell Butcher first loaded, the first thought was whether it was actually a Shady Lady slot. A sweating head being slowly dragged across a bloody rock surface by a hooked blade isn't something you expect to see in a Pragmatic Play title. Devil's Finger was the first game that came to mind as a comparison, far more readily than anything from Prag's considerable portfolio. Considering a line-up of games bulging with gates, dragons, and fishing, Hell Butcher might not be as twisted as Devil's Finger, yet it is a pretty macabre piece of work from this developer.

The theme intertwines with the game's features quite well, which are primarily based around wild multipliers. The twist is that wilds don't just land out of the blue with ready-made multipliers on board, but have to pluck values from the tortured souls beneath the grid. The more the plucking, the better for the player, too, since multipliers sit on a trail that produces larger values whenever a multiplier has been grabbed. Randomly grabbing a multiplier occurs when the Butcher Wild lands; one is guaranteed to be grabbed by the No Miss Wild, and the action can really heat up when the No Miss Madness wild makes its appearance in the corresponding free spins round. The knock-out blow is, as in Slotmill's Dark Forge, when multipliers taken from the trail are removed forever, well, till the round ends, making it easier to get to the larger values where greater thrills may be possible.

Okay, we might have overplayed how extreme Hell Butcher is, but it is out of character for Pragmatic Play, and whether the exploration turns out to be a temporary dark detour or something more permanent remains to be seen. Hell Butcher is slightly upsetting, so it won't be to all sensibilities, but its impressive 20,000x win cap, intense theme, wild multiplier feature, and galaxy of betting options make it an potent gambling machine.