Undead Fortune: Slot Overview

Pure guesswork, but grave robbing has likely existed for as long as people have been buried alongside valuables. Maybe those hoping to take their riches to the afterlife even helped popularise zombie tales to frighten off potential tomb raiders? Whatever the truth, players can sample the undead in Hacksaw Gaming’s online slot Undead Fortune, another release that shows off the studio’s darker streak. It treads a route established by earlier titles like Hand of Anubis and Gladiator legends, building on Hacksaw Gaming’s DuelReels mechanic and pairing it with a packed set of additions such as Walking duels, Expanding DuelReels, The Curse bonus round, and The Tomb bonus round.

At first, Undead Fortune didn’t land with quite the same punch as Hand of Anubis, whose oppressive mood felt like you’d been weighed up for your life choices and found lacking. Undead Fortune is loaded with gruesome visuals, including a massive hooded cobra, yet it didn’t deliver the same depth of dread. Still, it’s oddly energetic, and before long the animated undead inhabitants will be firing up the reels through the features and, ideally, coughing up a bit of their treasure.

Hacksaw Gaming releases often skew toward high risk, and based on our play sessions, Undead Fortune fully earns its 4 out of 5 volatility rating. As is typical, it’s offered with multiple RTP configurations, topping out at 96.29%, and at that setting it carries a hit frequency of 26.77%. For standard play, you can choose stakes from 10 p/c to $/€100, and it runs on mobile, desktop, and tablet.

Set within a hieroglyph-covered stone frame, Undead Fortune features a 5-reel, 4-row layout. Across the grid are 10 fixed paylines, paying on combinations of three to five of a kind. The paytable uses 10-A card royals for lower-value wins, while five monster/character icons serve as the premium symbols. A five-of-a-kind line returns 1-1.5x the bet for five royals or 4-10x the bet for five premiums. Completing the set is the wild symbol, which can land on any reel and substitutes for all standard pay symbols. If five wilds connect on a payline, they pay 10 times the stake.

Undead Fortune: Slot Features

Undead Fortune takes cues from the games that came before it, while still carving out its own identity. The feature set includes Walking duels, Expanded DuelReels, The Curse, The Tomb, plus several bonus buys for eligible players.

Walking Duels

Hitting Walk VS symbols triggers Walking duels. Walking duels are wilds that expand to cover the whole reel. They show a monster and a multiplier value. If the monster is defeated, the multiplier is applied to the whole reel, enhancing any wins that run through it. If more than one Walking duel contributes to the same win, the multiplier values are added together before being applied. Multipliers range from x2 to x200. Beating the monster also grants a respin, and the expanded Walking duel symbol moves one reel to the left unless stopped by another Walking duel symbol or the edge of the grid. In its new spot, another duel occurs, repeating the steps described above. Additional Walk VS symbols may land during respins.

Expanding DuelReels

Expand VS symbols can land on reels 2, 3, 4, or 5 and activate Expanding duels. These Expanding duel symbols are wild and expand to cover the whole reel, revealing a monster and a multiplier. When the monster is defeated, the multiplier is saved, and the Expanding duel expands one reel to the left unless prevented by the edge of the board. After expanding, a new monster and multiplier appear and the sequence repeats. If the monster is beaten following the expansion, the new multiplier is added to the existing total. Multiplier values run from x2 to x200. If the monster is not defeated or the Expanding duel can’t expand further, any winning lines linked to it are multiplied by the multiplier. Walk VS and Expand VS symbols cannot appear simultaneously.

The Curse

Landing 3 Curse symbols on reels 1, 3, and 5 in a single base game spin starts The Curse bonus game. In The Curse, you receive 10 free spins with a greater chance of landing Walk VS and Expand VS symbols.

The Tomb

Landing 3 Tomb scatters in a game on reels 1, 3, and 5 in a single game round triggers The Tomb bonus round. The round opens with multiplier values above each reel. Some reels are locked, while others are active. Landing Tomb VS symbols on an active reel reveals a monster and a multiplier value of 2x to 200x. Winning the duel adds the multiplier to the value above it. Losing the duel locks the reel. Once all five reels are locked, the feature ends and the values above the reels are paid out. However, it is possible to unlock reels. If 4 unlock symbols land on a locked reel, it becomes unlocked, or if the Golden Unlock symbol lands, all locked reels are unlocked.

Another symbol that can appear during the feature is the Epic Vs scatter. When it lands, the whole grid becomes a duel, showing monsters and a multiplier value. If you win this duel, all active reel values are either multiplied by x2 to x20 or have 25x to 200x added to them. If you lose the duel, the reel where the Epic VS symbol landed is locked.

Buy Bonus

Undead Fortune’s feature buy menu offers these five ways of playing the game:

• Bonus Featurespins – 3x the bet where each spin is 5 times more likely to award a bonus game. Very highly volatile.
• Walking Duel Featurespins – 10x the bet to guarantee at least one Walk VS symbol lands. Very highly volatile.
• Expanding Duel Featurespins – 50x the bet to guarantee that one Expand VS symbol hits. Extremely volatile.
• The Curse – 100x the bet. Very high volatility.
• The Tomb – 200x the bet. Very high volatility.

Undead Fortune: Slot Verdict

Hand of Anubis swept onto the screen like an icy gust from the underworld, instantly commanding attention with its grim presentation. Undead Fortune delivers a hint of that vibe, but it’s less intense. Partly because Hand of Anubis arrived first and claimed the spotlight, and partly because the touches of neon lend Undead Fortune a sort of undead-at-a-90s-retro-party feel. It’s still packed with disturbing imagery (for an online slot); the guys with the huge stretched mouths are genuinely nasty. If you’re prone to night terrors, you might want to play in daylight or keep the lights on after dark—there’s plenty here that could fuel them.

From a gameplay perspective, Undead Fortune is unmistakably Hacksaw. It borrows from the studio’s earlier work, yet still guides players into fresh territory. Walking Wilds aren’t brand new, but here they can hand out multipliers as they move, or—via the Expanding duel variant—spread across the grid while stacking multiplier value. Both can show up in the base game or during The Curse, where they’re technically more likely to appear. Alternatively, you can purchase them through the feature buy, although getting repeatedly shut down by back-to-back losing duels can wear thin.

The Tomb is a different beast entirely and can swing wildly. Our bonus buy outcomes ranged from around 4x the bet to 4,651x. Other sessions weren’t quite that dramatic, but Hacksaw Gaming slots are known for volatility, and The Tomb certainly lived up to that reputation during the review. At its peak, Undead Fortune can deliver wins up to 10,000x the bet. Given the studio’s history and the layers of multiplier potential in Undead Fortune, it feels like a realistic target.

After starting out with online scratch cards, Hacksaw Gaming has become a favourite among certain streamers, and it’s easy to picture them (and others) hammering Undead Fortune’s feature buy button as well. The good news is that casual players can still get plenty of fun from Undead Fortune too—so long as they’re ready for a potentially bumpy, volatile ride and don’t mind an army of undead regularly trying to dish out a beating.