Wicked Tales: Dark Red Introduction

Wicked Tales: Dark Red comes from a joint effort between Microgaming and Triple Edge Studios. If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s essentially a re-skin of another Microgaming title, though the payouts and underlying maths have been tweaked a little. Many of you will probably spot the connection to Microgaming’s Halloween the moment you see the first screenshot. The conversation at Microgaming HQ might have sounded something like this:

• Microgaming: um, so how’s development going? Things are a bit slow over here and we need to churn some crap out.
• Triple Edge: to be honest sir, most guys are on vacation so yeah (scratches head awkwardly), but we have this 100x potential Kitty slot we’re working on, will be fabulous!
• Microgaming: Nah, screw that. Kittens are so 2015. Hm, lemme think. Ok, I tell you what. Y’know our smash hit slot Halloween?
• Triple Edge: No.
• Microgaming: Well, take that one, slap on some new graphics and just update that crappy paytable a bit. Voilà!
• Triple Edge: I’m on it sir!

The horror vibe remains intact, so they haven’t wandered far from the original Halloween mood. As the title implies, Wicked Tales: Dark Red reworks the Red Riding Hood fairy tale with a darker edge. The backdrop is a genuinely nice illustration of the fictional Ravenmire forest, complete with subtle animation like smoke drifting from the cabin chimney.

Wicked Tales: Dark Red is a 5-reel slot with 25 pay lines. It uses a 3-3-4-4-4 row layout, and the Wandering Reels mechanic (covered properly further down) lets a 3×4 portion of the reels shift left and right, meaning the configuration can change to 3-4-4-4-3, for instance. The minimum bet is €0.25, while the maximum bet reaches €200, so it can accommodate high rollers.

Wicked Tales: Dark Red Symbols & Paytable

The slot includes 10 standard symbols: 6 low-value icons and 4 higher-paying characters/items shown as pendants, wolves, torch guy, and sexy Red Riding Hood. Red Riding Hood is the top regular symbol, paying a 20x win for 5 across a full pay line. Credit to Microgaming for keeping the paytable straightforward—rather than forcing you to work out coin values, it displays symbol payouts directly in cash based on your current stake.

As expected, there’s a Wild symbol performing its usual substitution role, plus a bonus trigger symbol presented as a Full Moon.

Wandering Reels & Jumbo Blocks

If you’ve played Halloween, this will be familiar. If you haven’t, you’ll quickly notice the unusual—and admittedly pretty inventive—reel arrangement. The Wandering Reels block is made up of 3 reels and 4 rows that spin as a single unit, shifting randomly left or right on most spins.

More importantly, the Wandering Reels can bring in Jumbo Blocks, which are essentially complete 3×4 blocks of premium symbols, as shown in the image above. Thanks to these, you can hit a full-screen premium for a total payout of 1000 times the stake.

Wicked Tales: Dark Red Bonuses

Hitting 3 Full Moon scatter symbols anywhere in the base game activates the Wolf’s Wheel Bonus. Once the wheel is in play, you’re assured of landing either a cash prize or a feature—sometimes you can even get both. For instance, a player could first pick up the top 20x cash prize and then go on to trigger the Forest of Fortunes pick bonus.

The pick bonus behaves like most pick bonuses do—generally limited upside. You can win a 20x multiplier by uncovering all 10 cash prizes, so there is some value there, but the real goal in this slot is getting into the free spins round.

Wicked Tales: Dark Red Free Spins

The free spins feature starts when the bonus wheel lands on one of the premium symbols. Whatever symbol is selected on the wheel replaces ALL premium symbols during the free spins, boosting the odds of landing a full screen of the top symbol. In this way, you can theoretically hit the maximum 1000x win on each of the 9 free spins, giving the game a theoretical ceiling of 9000 times the stake. Realistically, the odds of that are extremely slim, and most players would be thrilled just to see a single 1000x hit in this slot.

Wicked Tales: Dark Red Conclusion

What the developers have done is take an older game (Halloween), cut the paylines from 50 down to 25, and then double the top payout potential to create a slightly more volatile take. The original’s max win is a weak 500x, so this version feels closer to what it should have been from day one.

That extra upside doesn’t automatically improve your chances of walking away ahead. If anything, it’s probably tougher, as is often the case when variance is increased. While testing for this review, we struggled to trigger the bonus wheel, and even when you do reach it, free spins aren’t guaranteed.

Still, it’s easily the best title so far to carry the Triple Edge logo—but does that matter much when the game is essentially a clone of a poor Microgaming slot?