Draculas Castle

The international multimedia vampire trend continues, and with Dracula’s Castle, the Cyprus-based design company Wazdan joins in on the fun. Featuring massive wall win multipliers and an expanding vampiric wild symbol, this slot exalts in dark, gothic design. As images of Dracula feasting upon fair-complexioned women accompany big wins, players may find themselves rooting for the forces of even.

Theme

This slot’s design is just about as dark as it gets. The reels are situated in the moonlit graveyard outside a mausoleum, where bats and spiders dart past and ghosts rise out of the ground. Gaming symbols include two glamorous ladies (one dead and one living), the titular castle, a bat in flight, a gravestone, and the playing card values ace through nine. Dracula acts as the expanding wild symbol, filling whole reels while paying out a hefty 10,000x for five-of-a-kind wins. Haunting music accompanies play. The overall feel of gameplay is deliciously dark, sure to charm many a veteran and newbie alike.

Betting Options and Functions

This five reel slot is unusual in that it features only five paylines, all paying from left to right. This means that players may have to wait longer than usual to see wins appear; this is ameliorated somewhat by the player option to adjust volatility, found in the lower right of the game screen. Lower volatility indicates more frequent wins of lesser magnitude, with higher volatility yielding less frequent wins, but higher payouts when those wins do come along.

Coin value is adjustable from 0.01–1.00, with bet in coins adjustable from 0.10–100. This yields an overall per-spin bet range of 0.10–100.00 times the betting currency. Information regarding the overall theoretical return to player ratio is unfortunately not available, usually an indicator of sub-par odds for players.

Features

Wazdan has built a stylish slot in Dracula’s castle, but the gaming features don’t really keep up with the slick feel of gameplay. There are no free spin, and no bonus features. There is gamble feature, which allows players to play double-or-nothing with any win. A pale, undead redhead will offer two cups to players – the one with blood inside will double the size of the win, while the one containing water will drop win size down to zero… with the host of the feature turning to ash in the bargain.

Instead of multiple features, what this game does have are massive wins available in base play. The wall win multiplier is one such feature. Three-by-three blocks of the same symbol will trigger a triple win multiplier across all paylines; four-by-three blocks will trigger a quadruple win multiplier, while a five-by-three block adds a fivefold multiplier. Add to this the expanding dracula wild symbols, with their 10,000x payout possibility, and the chances for a big win in base play are much stronger than in the average slot.

Our Take

With Dracula’s Castle, Wazdan again impresses in terms of style, design, and ease of play. It is refreshing to see a slot focus on delivering big payouts during base play, rather than spending so much energy on bonus features that are rarely triggered. Still, for all of its charms, this game grows dull quickly without bonuses to break up the tempo of gaming. This slot is a solid base hit, but far from a home run.