How To Play Hellcatraz Mobile Slot
Can you escape from this Hellcatraz mobile slot? You just might, just sure you don’t take any shortcuts or you’ll end up right where you started.
Hellcatraz is a 6 reel and 6-row slot game with 46,656 ways to win with wilds, free spins, avalanching reels and mystery symbols. It may seem big and complicated, but once you make one important decision, it becomes very simple.
Will you go on Lockdown or Mixed mode? You change the RTP of the slot game. Lockdown is set to 96.46%, whilst in Mixed mode it’s 96.30%. What it really means is that you set the counters on the mystery symbols.
These are boxes with mysterious packages or symbols. In Lockdown, they have one counter of around 2 to 5. In Mixed mode, you’ll get two different counter numbers. With every avalanching win, the counter goes down by 1. When it reaches 0 it turns into one mystery symbol from the paytable.
How the avalanching wins work in this Hellcatraz slot game
On every win, the symbols will explode and more will tumble down from above, giving you a second chance at another win. The trick is to get enough wins to get those counters down to zero.
Which is a weird balance. On one hand, you want lots of mystery symbols in order to get more wins down the line. On the other hand, if you have too many mystery symbols, there is no way you can make enough avalanching wins to turn the mystery symbols into anything worthwhile.
But not enough mystery symbols, and getting a win over 15x your bet is almost impossible. In short, you don’t escape from this Hellcatraz slot quickly, but patiently and slowly.
Our question though: why do we have to fight so hard for mystery symbols? The Mystery Power Reels slot gives them to us easily enough?
A great theme and some great free spins
Thank-fully they’ve created a retro slot game here that is fun and wonderful to play, with every pixelated image making you think back to all the great classic video games of the 80s and 90s.
You even have a little golden toothed shark that you can imagine will eat you right up as you try and swim from the Hellcatraz slot machine to freedom.
The fact that you get so many ways to win does help bring you a little momentum during the base game, though you will have to wait a long time to trigger the free spins. When you do, getting 150x your bet is not unusual, as the mystery symbols are common and don’t have a countdown.
Unfortunately, short of buying the bonus games for 200x your bet (which is a huge risk), you may have to wait for over 400 spins to trigger the bonus games.
If only this real money slot had been a little more generous with their main bonus features, maybe we could have given this Hellcatraz slot review 4 stars. As it stands this is still a very decent, if very volatile machine by Relax Gaming.
Hellcatraz Slot Stats
| Mobile Slot Released | May 2020 |
| Slot Type | Video Slot |
| Software Provider | Relax Gaming |
| Slot Reels / Paylines | 6 Reels / 46656 Ways to Win |
| House Edge / RTP | 3.17% to 3.7% / 96.83% |
| Slot Volatility | Medium/High |
| Min/Max Bet | 0.10 / 25 |
| Max Win | 51,843 x your bet |
| Free Spins | 5 Free Spins / More Mystery Symbols |
| Bonus Rounds | Wild, Cascading Wins, Mystery Symbols, Free Spins, |
| Slot Themes | Classic & Retro |
Hellcatraz Bonus Features
Wild: The W is the wild symbol and substitutes for all other symbols when evaluating a win.
Cascading Win: Every win, the symbols disappear and more will come tumbling down from above, giving you a second chance at a win.
Mystery Reveal Feature: During each spin, there are mystery symbols present. These have counters which are reduced by on each winning cascade. When the counter reaches zero, the reveal is activated and all mystery symbols will turn into one of the same symbols.
The Modes: Before you start, you have to choose between one of two modes.
- Lockdown Mode: All mystery symbols will have the same counter values. (Super High Variance)
- Mixed Mode: All mystery symbols will have two independent counter values. (high Variance)
Key Collector: In the base game and free spins, key symbols randomly appear on top of normal symbols. You'll get anything from 1 to 10 keys from each symbol.
Super Free Spins Rules: Once you've collected 2,000 keys, you start the 5 super free spins. During these spins, you get the golden mystery symbol. The golden mystery symbol requires 2 winning cascades and will give you 1 additional spin when it transformed into a random symbol.
Mystery symbols will also only come with a 0 countdown, so they always turn into one and the same symbol.
Buy Feature Game Rule: In the base game, you can buy free spin feature in one of two ways. To buy the full feature, you will have to pay 200x your chosen bet size. This won't affect the key collection.
If you choose the top-up feature buy, you can buy to top up the remaining keys you have left if you are bored of collecting. The cost is 0.1 times the chosen bet size for each key required. The key collection is reset after you buy the feature.
The RTP for buying the free spins feature is 96.83%.
