Red Horde

If you play demo games with a horror theme, such as Zombies by NetEnt or Haunted House by Playtech, you’d find that these games are inherently more immersive than slots from other genres. Here, Mascot Gaming fully uses that to its advantage with Red Horde and balances it with a decent amount of comedy.

The game’s story follows a village, which is mainly composed of farmers. Since they’ve no experience with the threat of monsters, they’re clueless about how to counter it. Both the Farmer and the Villager symbols reflect this, but the Warrior symbol is more serious, which is how the game strikes the balance between horror and humour. We enjoyed this thematic interplay a lot as we played to both win big and save the village from the horde of monsters.

Red Horde’s graphics, unfortunately, are not its biggest asset. All the symbols are spot on, whether it’s the villagers or the monsters, but we didn’t find the animation to be lively enough. What does bring a lot of visual flavour is the background, which includes a small, symmetrical river running across the village, and small houses in the periphery.

Both the SFX and the music are pretty apt given the setting with folky drums and bagpipes rhythmically sounding off. We found it to be quite effective, as when we played the game without it, the comic aspect of Red Horde was overpowered by its horror undertones.

Red Horde’s RTP (return-to-player) is 95.43%, which barely scratches the surface. Most online slots typically feature an RTP rating of 96% or upwards, and several Mascot Gaming titles such as Wild Spirit and Book of Amaterasu feature an RTP of 97%, so we would have appreciated a higher value. However, the game’s medium volatility makes it ideal for slot beginners without much risk.

The payout stands out to be the most defining aspect of Red Horde, as players can maximise their wins by 500x the bet amount. While we like that the game allows players to bet as low as €0.15, we think the maximum bet amount should have been higher than €75. Still, a potential win of €37,500 doesn’t sound too bad either!

Red Horde features a 5×3 grid and delivers wins across its 15 fixed paylines. There are a total of 14 symbols that players will encounter as you can see below. All the characters, including the boy, the goblins, and the cow, contribute to higher payouts. The crucial symbol here is the Blue Pendant, which triggers free spin rounds in sets of three, four, and five respectively.

The gameplay itself is quite straightforward and features a betting button, a quick spin button, and a dedicated autoplay panel which has a few options to help hedge against mounting losses up to a certain threshold.

There are a couple of features that increase the scope of wins in Red Horde. Those seeking simpler slot mechanics would appreciate Red Horde.

• Treasure Chests – The chests on the right side of the grid unveil a series of wild symbols, which successively mount, and get triggered collectively in the case of a win. These wild symbols feature 2x, 3x, and 5x multipliers.
• Free Spins – Upon three or more scatter symbols being triggered, there’s a bonus free spin round with 10 turns. The wild symbol stacks apply to wins in the FS rounds too.