Brave a creepy graveyard in Bat Stax, a Halloween inspired slot from Novomatic. The action here takes place using a 5 reel, 20 payline game engine and comes with some nifty extras. Central to the action are overlaid bat symbols. Land 3 or more of these and they fill their reel with standard paying bat symbols. Trigger the free spins round and you’ll play with up to 50 free spins with more overlay extras. Stakes here start at 20p, rising to a maximum of £50 per spin.
Creepy visuals & classic soundtrack
There’s a proper horror feel to the design in Bat Staxx. The setting is a cemetery that’s engulfed in mist. On the reels you’ll find Novomatic’s usual collection of A to 10 values alongside symbols associated to the theme. They include a spider, a black cat and an owl. The wise old bird is the best of these standard symbols, paying 25 times your total bet if you land 5 on a payline.
Sorcerer wilds
Helping to create those winners is the sorcerer’s hat which is the wild. This substitutes for everything apart from the pumpkin scatter and the bat symbol. The hat also pays 0.25, 2, 20 or 50 times your bet is you land 2, 3, 4 or 5 in combination.
Overlay bats
Appearing on top of the standard symbols are special overlaid bats. These can develop some magical properties if you land 3 or more of them on the same spin. When that happens, those reels are filled with standard bat symbols which offer payouts of 2.5, 5 or 50 times your bet if you land 3, 4 or 5 in combination.
Up to 50 free spins
The Free Games feature is triggered by landing 3, 4 or 5 of the pumpkin scatter anywhere on the reels on the same spin. After a payout of 2, 10 or 25 times your bet, you’ll then receive 10, 15 or 25 free spins. You can also retrigger the feature (with 3 or more scatters) to give you 50 free spins altogether.
Overlay extras
The bats are in play during the free spins. They have slightly different properties here. You’ll only need 2 rather than a minimum of 3 to trigger the expanded reels. Regardless of where the overlaid symbols appear, they will fill reels 1 and 2 with bat symbols. They are then held, and a re-spin follows. These continue until no new matching bat joins the original cluster.
Halloween horror
Bat Stax is a classic Novomatic slot. It’s immediately recognisable as being created by the Austrian developer. The features offer something a little different from the norm too thanks to the overlaid bats. It’s not as volatile as some in the Novomatic catalogue but the medium volatility is sharp enough to keep things moving.
You can win up to 1,000 times your bet on each spin or free spin. If you’re looking for a video slot to get you in the mood for Halloween, there are better options out there – such as Yggdrasil Gaming’s Blood Moon Wilds.
