Wicked Tales: Dark Red

If you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise… In the form of Wicked Tales: Dark Red, a fairytale slot game putting a dark twist on the traditional Red Riding Hood story.

Developed by Microgaming, this game has some interesting feature, in fact when launching this game you’ll first be greeted by a prompt pop up explaining the basics of how some of these work; we’ll cover more about those below.

First lets discus how this Wicked Tales: Dark Red looks, because it is a spectacularly detailed game with some amazing little touches that help it to establish it’s fantasy theme. The background is a forest clearing with Grandma’s cottage off to the right of the screen and the dark forest tree line on the left. It’s a beautifully painted scene with every leave of the pines clearly defined and a softly rising plume of animated smoke rising from the cottage chimney. The reels are surrounded by a strong looking timber and iron framework further signifying the woodland aesthetic–and the reels themselves are freshly stained dark teal wood panels with the game’s symbols gliding serenely over its rough surface.

The background sound effects very clearly paint an evening picture, with crickets chirping in the fading daylight and the faint howling of distant wolves beginning their twilight activities. The game music only kicks in while the reels are spinning though the punchy orchestral score in reminiscent of something you could imagine in a Hollywood fantasy blockbuster. Speaking of spinning those reels, you’ll immediately notice Wicked Tales: Dark Red’s most obvious feature, its uneven “Wandering Reels”. The regular game grid is 5 x 3 tilesbut on every spin a block of three of these reels will always be expanded to four symbols in height. This block of reels wanders settling in one of three positions for each spin. The exact combination of 25 pay lines in play depend upon where on they stop. Minimum bets begin at £0.25 but can be jacked up for an adrenaline pumping max bet of £200 a spin. A theoretical RTP (return to player) of 96.1% puts the house edge on Wicked Tales: Dark Red right in the middle of reasonable.

Feature Symbols

As promised, let’s get into this game’s feature mechanics and interesting quirks. One added advantage of the extra tall wandering reels is that they are home to a number of “Jumbo Blocks”, massive high value symbols that cover the entire 3 x 4 tile area of the wandering reels. These jumbo block can either partially or fully fill the screen bringing with them a massively increased opportunity for matching up winning lines with big winning symbols!

This is a slot set at the edge of the wilderness and it wouldn’t be complete a set of Wild symbols. In this case it’s the “Dark Red” symbol (literally just those words in a stylised olde medieval type-font. Asyou’d expect these wilds match up with all surrounding symbols vastly improving the chances of creating a winning line combination.

The last, but most important, of Wicked Tales: Dark Red’s special symbols is the Full Moon scatter. Three of these dangerous symbols anywhere on the reels will launch the Wolf Wheel bonus round…

Bonuses and Jackpots

Spin the Wolf Wheel to either win one of two bonus features or a direct multiplier for up to 20x your stake on the current spin. If the spinner ends on a high value game symbol instead you’ll begin a Free Spins round with 9 spins to play and all of the high value symbols replace with the same symbol that triggered the Free Spins round; obviously this has the effect of helping to populate your reels with a good deal of matching symbols with maximum pay offs from the each Free Spin standing at 5000 times your initial stake!

The second bonus feature is triggered if the spinner lands on the treasure chest symbol, beginning the Forest Fortune round. Pick coin pouches to see if they contain cash to collect or a sharp axe to protect yourself from wolves. The round continues until either all the pouches are picked or a wolf emerges to attack you. If you’ve pick up an axe it will fend off one wolf attack allowing you to continue the feature.

Play Wicked Tales: Dark Red at PartyCasino

Gather your courage and venture into the woods in search of riches with Wicked Tales: Dark Red. It’s a fascinating and enthralling slot with plenty of fun features to mix up gameplay and reward you with decent sized wins. Give Wicked Tales: Dark Red a trial spin today at PartyCasino; you can even play it for free with play money if you’re not sure about it!