Necromancer’s Gate

Necromancer's Gate Slot Overview

Reality has a way of shrinking down to chores, deadlines, and the endless loop of everyday routines. Then along comes a game like Necromancer's Gate, nudging us to imagine that something stranger might be hiding just beyond the curtain. Relax Gaming's latest slot puts the spotlight on a familiar figure for long-time fans of the Money Train series. Necromancers, for the uninitiated, are practitioners of the darker arts: communing with the dead, twisting energies best left alone, that sort of thing. If that flavor of occult mischief sounds appealing, Necromancer's Gate is ready to open up and let you take a peek inside.

Hints that the Necromancer in this slot might be a baddie are supplied right from the start, thanks to the 'mwah ha ha ha ha' as the game opens up. Further clues are supplied by the eerie, floating skulls, fluorescent green world he inhabits. The actual Necromancer is with us, not only appearing on the grid as the highest paying symbol, but also next to it with a pair of spectral hands holding his staff, waiting to do his bidding. Stonework binds a 5x4 gaming grid together in the base game, before drawing players through a swirling vortex into free spins where eerie greens are swapped for more malevolent reds.

For the majority of the base game, winning combinations of 3 to 5 OAK can land across 20 paylines. This changes during the Necromancer's Coin Toss feature and in free spins to a scatter paying mechanic, as we will see. On the stake side, it is possible to bet $/€0.10 to $/€40 per spin, and there are three Upgrade Spins options for players who like to add ante bet functions. With an RTP of 96.1%, the volatility is high, or extremely high if buying Super Chaos Spins.

Heading over to the paytable, we come across blue, green, yellow, and purple stones, lanterns, skull rings, eyed pyramids, books with skulls on them, and the Necromancer himself. A line of 5 matching stones pays 2x to 3x the bet, while the rest are worth 8x to 30x for 5 OAK. Wilds are able to help create wins by substituting all regular symbols. While the scatter pays system is active, pay symbols award 14x to 34x for 16 OAK or 60x to 200x for 24+ OAK

Necromancer's Gate: Slot Features

Bursting forth from the gate are Mystery Respins, Chaos Spins, the Necromancer's Coin Toss, feature buys, and Upgrade Spins.

Mystery Respin

At the start of any spin, the Necromancer may summon 1 to 16 cursed skulls onto reels 1, 2, 4, and 5. No other symbols may appear when this happens. If a Ghoul Activator lands on the middle reel, the Skulls open to reveal matching pay symbols, or the Necromancer's Coin Toss. A scatter pays system is used to evaluate the win if pay symbols appear, where the total number of matching symbols on screen determines the payout. The Ghoul Activator symbol also comes with a multiplier of up to x10, which applies to the total win of the round. If one scatter lands, then players win 8, 10, or 12 Chaos Spins when the round is complete.

Chaos Spins

Players win 8, 10, or 12 Chaos Spins by landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters in the base game. On any non-winning base game spin that does not trigger Chaos Spins, the Necromancer may use his staff to cause 3 to 5 scatters to fall onto the reels. In Chaos Spins, the grid expands to 7x5, and a scatter pays mechanic is used to evaluate regular pay symbol awards.

Each Chaos Spin lands blanks or Mystery Skulls on the 26 outer positions, while a 3x3 block in the middle of the grid can land blanks or up to 3 Ghoul Activators. Mystery Skulls are sticky for the round's duration. Whenever a Ghoul Activator lands, the Mystery Skulls activate, revealing a matching pay symbol or the Necromancer's Coin Toss. Ghoul Activators come with a multiplier of up to x10, and when more than one hits, their values multiply each other. Scatters may land as well, but are not sticky. Each landed scatter awards +1 free spin.

Necromancer's Coin Toss

This feature can happen in all game modes. Each symbol reveals:

• Coin - worth up to 1,000x the bet.
• Monocle of Doom - Targets a Coin and doubles its value 1 to 5 times.
• Soul Collector - Collects all Coin values in view and resets all other Coins to effectively grant a new respin. If a new Soul Collector lands, it collects the previous and resets the Coin Toss again.
• Inferno Staff - Shoots the value it lands with (1x-50x) to all other Coins in view.
• Ghoul Tonic - Targets a Ghoul Activator on the reels, boosting its multiplier by an additional x1 to x9.

Feature Buy & Upgrade Spins

The feature buy is where players can activate Chaos Spins for 100x or Super Chaos spins, which guarantees 12 spins with extreme volatility and an increased chance of hitting a 1,000x Ghoul Multiplier combination for 500x the bet. Clicking the Upgrade Spins button reveals three choices. They are the Enhanced Scatter, costing an extra 25% to double the chance of getting into Chaos Spins, Bonus Reels at 10x the bet, where only bonus symbols may land to improve the feature triggering chance, and Mystery Spins at 20x, which starts the Mystery Spins feature.

Necromancer's Gate: Slot Verdict

Though it might help, you don't have to be a fantasy enthusiast or someone who, err, actually tries to commune with the dead to enjoy Necromancer's Gate. Relax Gaming has set up a fun fantasy game world in the tradition of Tome of Madness or Rich Wilde and the Tome of Insanity, for players to try their luck while experiencing a more hidden side of life. This is a world built on mystification that lets players dip a claw into the arcane without the need for a DM. Whether communicating with the other side is something that is or could ever be possible, let's just leave it to the side, as we roll up our baggy wizard sleeves to dissect what sort of tricks Necromancer's Gate can conjure up.

Necromancer's Gate's tricks aren't without intriguing qualities, and like the subject matter fronting them, they possess plenty of mystery of their own. In fact, Mystery Skull reveals are one of the game's biggest thrill generators, along with the stabs of suspense Ghoul Activators contribute as well. There's actually a triple round of suspense to each Chaos Spin. The first part is the landing (or not) of Mystery Skulls, then seeing if Ghoul Activators will land as well as what multipliers they may bring, followed by the Skull reveal. The game is highly volatile, so there was a lot of low/mid-value stuff going on, x1 Ghoul Activator multis and so on. But, every so often, something more substantial would occur to justify this trip into the unknown. Never the enigmatic x1,000 combined multiplier, though it is a technical possibility, as is winning up to 25,000 times the bet.

Necromancer's Gate is Relax Gaming exploring a topic it hasn't gone overboard with in the past, while scattering a sample of innovations along the way. Instant prize Coin games are hot, as are mystery symbol reveals, and Necromancer's Gate was good enough to bring biggies like Push Gaming's Big Bamboo and Hacksaw Gaming's Golden Squares concept to mind. So, even if the necromantic thing isn't to all tastes, Necromancer's Gate has something new to offer fans of Coin wins, mystery reveals, and so forth.