Hellcatraz

Has anyone been to Alcatraz? No, not me, but I’ve been to Hellcatraz. Not the same kind of place no doubt but you do get the same kind of harsh treatment! Don’t believe me? Go and try this game out for yourself and find out for sure. It’s a game by Relax Gaming, which I call by another name – Re-stress Gaming, simply because their games are almost always very stressful to play. Extremely hard to win on and depressing most of the times.

I was kind of attracted to the game’s beautifully done cartoonish characters, and beautiful graphics can do indeed catch anyone’s immediate attention. However, after digging deeper into this game to see what it has to offer, my attraction soon withered away quickly. Super high volatility, extremely rock bottom win values of all the symbols, excruciatingly painful to trigger a Bonus game, and a hellish-catraz base game play! That certainly does not make for a relaxing gaming experience, trust me!

The only thing that I can like about this game is the 0.10 bet per spin cost for a 6 reels 6 rows kind of game. It has 46,656 ways to win but you’d be damn lucky to get any win on even just 100 paylines! This is one of those games that simply cannot be played without buying the Bonus game, because the base game itself is like playing with a dead cat. Way too many dead and non-paying spins, very low wins if any, and trying to collect enough Keys to trigger the Bonus game is one mission impossible, well, almost!

Yep, each Golden Key symbol that appears on the reels can award 1-5 Key symbols to be collected in the Key Collection Chamber on the lefthand side. You need to collect 2000, yes, not 100 or 200, but 2000 of them just to trigger a Bonus game - absolutely ridiculous! I did 400 spins and could only collect 235 Keys, so imagine how many more spins would be needed just to get one lousy Bonus game!

I seldom dislike any game but this is definitely one of them! No Wild symbol, no Scatter symbol, no Win Multiplier, but only Mystery Symbols that hardly ever give any good wins. Worst still, 2000 collected Keys award only 5 free spins, and additional +1 free spin do not come often either. Best to avoid playing this game!

Hellcatraz is one hell of a release from Relax gaming, based on the old school graphics type of a vibe. If you have played Flame Busters from Thunderkick you would know what I am talking about. I mean these days games are designed awesomely with great graphics and soundtrack, but who said that these old school slots cannot be entertaining as well.

This slot is an all-pay way slot with 46665 pay lines with 6 reels and 6 rows, so this can pay huge when you get lucky. The theme is based on Hellcatraz writing about the tough living conditions inside prisons in the 1930s. Symbols would include some basic card deck symbols like spades, diamonds, hearts, and clubs. High-value symbols include the police badge, handcuffs, a shark, the prisoner, and the policeman.

This slot has a mystery symbol that lands on the reels with a count down number on it, each time you win, and you are presented with 2 modes:

Mixed Mode – All mystery symbols has a different number count value before it reveals itself.

Lockdown Mode – All mystery symbols carry the same value as a count down before it reveals itself.

Now lockdown mode is more highly volatile but can generate wins as the mystery symbols take longer to reveal and all at once.

The game is all about the free spins feature now. Now unlike many other slots, you cannot land scatters on each spin you can collect keys to unlock the free spins feature. You have to collect 2000 keys which can take maybe even a full day if you play Hellcatraz all the time. I once collected mine over 3 days in total, however, the game has a buy option of buying all the keys at x200 your total bet or you can buy the remaining keys at a pro-rata rate.

During free spins, you get 5 spins and the nice thing is mystery symbols reveal themselves immediately on every spin, so if you have a stack of mystery symbols on each reel, you can easily hit x1000 – x2000 win on a single spin and even more on the other spins. This slot has potential

The disappointment comes when you take very long to collect all the keys which can take well 1000 – 2000 spins and at times you lose a lot of money, you end up winning nothing or x50 if you were lucky during free spins. The most frustrating thing ever.