Midnight Thirst

Midnight Thirst: Slot Overview

When regular humans wake up in the middle of the night with a parched throat, they can easily get a glass of water from the kitchen or wherever. Vampires, on the other hand, have to work a bit harder since blood is needed to quench their thirst. Blood from a living, soon-to-be-deceased creature. Death abounds in the online slot, Midnight Thirst, from software provider Max Win Gaming, as well. However, not the death of living creatures, fortunately. Midnight Thirst is a slot where dead spins are surprisingly desirable because consecutive no-win spins help build multiplier values and are needed to organically trigger the free spins round.

Softening the 'dead' angle further is Midnight Thirst's artwork, which has a faintly Book of Shadows quality to the symbols. Yet, where Book of Shadows was somewhat spooky, in an online slot way, Midnight Thirst is more cartoonish, with a merrily meandering soundtrack that contains one or two Addams Family-ish moments. A castle crypt is the base game setting for Midnight Thirst before moving outdoors to take in the Drac's spired residence during free spins.

Using a 1,024 ways to win pay system, each click of the spin button sets Midnight Thirst's 5-reel, 4-row gaming grid in motion. Since dead spins are a potential boon here, it's no surprise to see a slightly higher than usual, though not outrageously high, hit rate of 38.49%. This occurs when matching symbols land on adjacent reels from the leftmost side of the grid. Highly volatile, bets of 20 c to $/€20 per spin may be set, and players can theoretically expect a default RTP of 96.36%.

Winning symbols are removed from the reels by the chain reaction feature, making way for symbols to drop in to replace them. Chain reactions end when no new win is created after the symbol drop. Midnight Thirst's lower paying symbols include 10 to A card ranks, paying out 0.3 to 0.4 times the bet for a 5 symbol win, or 1 to 5 times the bet is paid for getting a 5 premium symbol win where the possible symbols are bats with orbs, bats with skulls, a lady, and a vampire. Maybe wilds are like garlic to a vampire or something because Midnight Thirst does not make use of any wild symbols.

Midnight Thirst: Slot Features

Dead spins are rarely as attractive as they are in Midnight Thirst, where, with the help of chain reactions, they can lead to progressive win multipliers, available in the base game as well as in free spins.

Progress Bar

Each consecutive dead spin increases the progress bar by 1 step, and 3 consecutive dead spins are needed to reach the next multiplier level. After a winning spin, the progress bar resets. In the base game, the progress bar multiplier levels are x1, x3, x6, and then free spins activation on level 4.

Free Spins

From the base game, 9 consecutive dead spins activate the free spins bonus. Players are awarded 9 free spins with an x6 starting multiplier. Each consecutive dead spin in the round increases the progress bar by 1 step, and 3 consecutive dead spins are needed to reach the next multiplier level. Reaching a new multiplier level awards +3 free spins. On a winning spin, the progress bar resets to the last multiplier level reached.

• Level 1 – x6 multiplier.
• Level 2 – x13 multiplier, +3 free spins.
• Level 3 – x24 multiplier, +3 free spins.
• Level 4 – x41 multiplier, +3 free spins.

Feature Buy

The bonus buy guarantees entry to the free spins round. It costs 80 times the bet and has an RTP of 96.47%.

Midnight Thirst: Slot Verdict

Midnight Thirst joins the ranks of games like Slotmill's The Big Hit and Northernlights' Treasure Ireland, where you do want to win, but not too often to give yourself a chance to potentially score something better a little later down the track. Instead of just bashing away in the hopes of racking up as many wins as possible, Midnight Thirst is a balancing act of not winning for a while in order to start working through the multipliers and maybe end up with free spins. Then, when a win does appear on the reels, fingers crossed it's a significant one to make up for the wait, hopefully, made better by a multiplier that has patiently accrued.

It's a tightrope act, in other words, that won't be to everyone's taste. Other players may be rubbing their hands together in glee at the thought of putting dead spins to good use. Keeping in mind there is no guarantee the wins that connect with a sizable multiplier will be anything more than a humble 3 low-pay symbol combination. Then it's back on the treadmill, starting the process from scratch all over again. The sitch perks up in free spins because the multipliers there are far weightier than those found in the base game, offering arguably the best chances of snatching glory – all the way up to 5,000x the bet at best.

For something a bit different, Midnight Thirst could be worth a demo spin or two to see what's up. Due to things like stats and the general run of play, gamblers shouldn't form the idea Midnight Thirst can't be as frustrating as any other slot. But, the game does exist in an environment where a different attitude to dead spins may form since no-win results can, with luck, turn out to be quite exciting in the medium to longer term.