Fear the Dark: Slot Overview

Got a touch of nyctophobia and like to keep the hallway light on at night? In that case, Fear the Dark from Hacksaw Gaming might not be the online slot you want to spin up during a dark, stormy evening. Then again, Fear the Dark belongs to Hacksaw Gaming’s Pocketz Series which, up to now, has delivered bright, charming titles—though they can still pack a punch. Or in Fear the Dark’s case, a little jump-scare vibe—served with Full Moon multipliers, Alone in the Dark free spins, and… Darkness Spins.

That said, Fear the Dark is “scary” in the same way an old Disney animation can be—meaning it’s not truly frightening, and definitely nowhere near something like Hand of Anubis from Hacksaw Gaming. The mostly black-and-white backdrop shows a cemetery under cloudy skies, complete with spiked railings, bare trees, and gravestones. Soft green ghosts float by regularly, and the quirky sound effects fit perfectly. Not genuinely terrifying, but a fun little “spooky” Pocketz slot that works nicely on a mobile.

Even though it’s a Pocketz slot, Fear the Dark plays smoothly on other devices too, with stakes from 10 p/c to $/€100 per spin. It’s a cluster-paying grid game on a 6×6 sized gaming panel, paying out when at least 5 matching symbols land next to each other in horizontally or vertically connected groups. Winning symbols pop off the board and new ones fall into place, so chain reactions and multiple wins on a single spin can happen. The math model is rated 3 out of 5 for medium volatile play, and the top regular RTP is 96.25%.

The paytable matches the cute-but-creepy theme as well. Low symbols include 5 black-and-white items: stairs, a tombstone, a cup, a cube, and a cross. The higher payers are more colourful: a ghost, green head, pig, clown, and zombie. A 5-of-a-kind pays 0.1 to 1.5 times the bet, while the biggest clusters (14+) can return 12.8 to 120 times the bet. Fear the Dark doesn’t include a wild symbol—maybe it ran off into the shadows.

Fear the Dark: Slot Features

What Fear the Dark does bring to the table are Full Moon multipliers, Alone in the Dark free spins, Darkness Spins, plus four feature buy choices. Here’s how each one works.

Full Moon

Landing the Moon Man scatter starts Full Moon mode and switches on 2 to 5 symbol multipliers, shown across the top of the grid, with each multiplier linked to a high-paying symbol. Multiplier values can be anywhere from x2 to x100. While active, multipliers apply to every win involving their matching symbol. Once the grid stops producing wins, the symbol multipliers are removed one by one from left to right. Each time a multiplier is removed, every instance of that symbol—along with low-pay symbols—is removed from the reels, causing a drop. After all multipliers have been removed in this way, Full Moon mode finishes.

Alone in the Dark

Landing 3 or 4 FS scatter symbols in the base game awards 10 or 15 Alone in the Dark free spins, respectively. In this feature, there’s a greater chance of landing Moon Man symbols compared to the base game. Any FS symbols that land add +4 free spins each.

Darkness Spins

After all free spins have been used, the bonus shifts into Darkness Spins mode. Each time this mode is entered or reset, +2 additional spins are granted. Before every Darkness Spin, the grid shrinks to 4×4, then to 2×2. Triggering Full Moon from this mode resets the grid back to 6×6. In addition, landing an FS retrigger restores the grid to 6×6 for the remainder of the current spin and returns players to standard free spins, resetting Darkness Spins. If Darkness Spins ends without an FS retrigger or Full Moon, the feature is over.

Buy Bonus

Anyone wanting to approach Fear the Dark in different ways can choose from the following options:

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins – 3x the bet where each spin is 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus game. Highly volatile with a max RTP of 96.41%.
• Moon Man FeatureSpins – 40x the bet where each spin guarantees to land at least 1 Moon Man symbol. Highly volatile with a max RTP of 96.25%.
• 10 Free Spins – 10 free spins for 100x the bet. Highly volatile with a max RTP of 96.23%.
• 15 Free Spins – 15 free spins for 150x the bet. Medium volatile with a max RTP of 96.25%.

Fear the Dark: Slot Verdict

All the way through, Fear the Dark feels like a textbook Hacksaw Gaming release. It nods to the studio’s earlier period, when it leaned harder into oddball, adorable slots that few others were producing. Om Nom, Cash Compass, Stick ‘Em—they all carried that unmistakable Hacksaw personality. While the studio later found success in larger, more mainstream spaces, Fear the Dark shows it can still deliver charming, offbeat Pocketz Series games.

That doesn’t mean Fear the Dark is among the studio’s very best, though. Once the initial glow of the likeable, not-quite-spooky theme wears off, the core gameplay is familiar Hacksaw Gaming territory: land a multiplier or two, lift the payout, and take what you get. Still, the way it’s implemented is slick, with the Moon Man kicking off Moon Mode and the rest flowing naturally. The Darkness Spins section is also pretty distinctive—sometimes it extends the bonus, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s an interesting twist either way.

On the plus side, Hacksaw Gaming has packed in plenty of fun details, from the different sound effects tied to winning symbols (some of them genuinely funny) to the retro cartoon style, a satisfying tempo, and a solid max win of 5,000 times the stake. Fear the Dark may not be a definitive Hacksaw Gaming classic, but if you’re fine sleeping with the lights off, it can be a pleasant little time-killer.