Mystery Bats: Slot Overview
Hacksaw Gaming partner Backseat Gaming has been getting up close and personal with bats, those flying mammals that use a fascinating echolocation system to navigate in the dark and catch insects or feast on fruits. In themselves, bats aren’t overly mysterious; however, the plot thickens when they’re given a more sinister appearance and linked to certain bloodsucking creatures of the night. Vampires don’t appear in today’s game, Mystery Bats, but bats do, and they’re connected to a spreading, multiplying symbol transformation feature, in a scatter pays slot with big winning potential.
Mystery Bats is held in a place with a few candles, dim lighting, arched stone work, that sort of thing. It’s not directly linked to vampirism, or Count Dracula or anything along those lines, but that’s the sort of vibe the game gives off. A bit spooky, a bit mysterious, a bit ghostly, a walk on the full moon, bite marks in the neck, wild side. Mystery Bats is not the type of game which feels like its maker dived head first into the dark side of things before recreating that experience on the reels. But, it ticks more than enough of the right boxes to encourage a cheeky tap on the spin button to find out what happens next.
Land 8 or more matching symbols anywhere on the 6×5 active area and a winning combination is created. The symbols in the win are removed from sight, letting existing and new symbols fall down to replace them. If a new winning combination appears after a tumble, the whole process triggers again. Mystery Bats’ stake range is more restricted than it usually is from a Hacksaw Gaming and company slot, on account of the larger-than-usual winning potential. In this game, players can choose from 10c to $/€40 and several feature buys. As well as a highly volatile math model, the upper of the two RTP values is 96.29%.
Five gems make up Mystery Bats’ lower pays, while crosses, rings, cups, and clocks are the highs. Combinations of 8 OAK in size award players 0.2x to 2x the bet when they hit, going up in value to 100x to 500x for a 25+ of a kind win. This game does not have wilds substituting anything.
Mystery Bats: Slot Features
Fluttering around in the features section, we spy symbol transformations, Nightfall, The Swarm, and feature buys.
Symbol Transformation
At the end of tumbles, Mystery Bat symbols activate by flying towards the top of the grid, transforming their original position and every symbol in their way into matching pay symbols. Each transformed symbol gets a random multiplier of x2 to x100. Multipliers in the same winning combination are combined and applied to the win.
Nightfall
Landing 3 scatters in the base game triggers 10 Nightfall free spins. This feature has an increased chance of landing Mystery Bat symbols, and if 3 scatters hit in this feature or the next, +10 free spins are awarded.
The Swarm
The Swarm is triggered by landing 4 scatters in the base game, awarding 10 free spins. This feature drops at least 1 Mystery Bat on every spin.
Feature Buys
The feature buys in Mystery Bats include BonusHunt FeatureSpins for x2 the bet, where every spin is 3 times as likely to trigger a bonus game, and Winged Chance FeatureSpins where at least 1 Mystery Bat is guaranteed on every spin for 50x the bet. The Nightfall round costs 100x to buy, and The Swarm is 200x.
Mystery Bats: Slot Verdict
It didn’t take long for Mystery Bats to bring to mind Backseat Gaming’s swashbuckling release Pirate Bonanza. Both are scatter paying slots that get their kicks by drenching multiplier values all over the reels like a spilt rum bottle. The two multiplier delivery systems are obviously different. In Pirate Bonanza, you need to highlight winning symbol positions, which get filled with multipliers if a Cannon symbol is present, to create a total multiplier. Mystery Bats’ system is simpler in that you just have to land a Mystery Bat symbol, which then fills its position and each position above it in multipliers and converted symbols, though it is in some ways harder to fill large portions of the grid with them compared to Pirate Bonanza.
Especially so when you consider the different rules in the two games’ bonus rounds. In Pirate Bonanza‘s free spins feature, highlighted positions persist till the feature ends. In Mystery Bats, they don’t persist, but there are more bats than in the base game. What’s surprising is that Mystery Bats packs bigger winning potential than both Pirate Bonanza slots, clocking in at a whopping 25,000x, which would explain the restricted betting options. What helps this number feel somewhat, sort of achievable, is that when multiple Mystery Bats are on the reels, they can cobble together very tidy wins, depending on the symbol reveal and multiplier values, plus the large number of consecutive cascading wins which can occur when Mystery Bats gets on a roll can be exciting.
Where Mystery Bats slips a little is that it doesn’t have the same commanding screen presence of a scatter pays titan like Gates of Olympus. The presentation, whilst absolutely fine, is a little subdued, a bit gentle for a game boasting these sorts of features and numbers, but statistically and mechanically, Mystery Bats competes strongly with the bosses of the scatter pays genre.
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