Is it only us, or does Backseat Gaming sound a bit too passive for a developer who presumably wants to stand on their own two feet at some point. They have certainly allowed partner Hacksaw to do the heavy lifting in their debut release, Lord Venom, or so it seems, as this game comes with Hacksaw well-known user interface and recognizable features. The cartoonish animal visual presentation may be their own style, and time will tell once we see more from this developer.
We have to say that Lord Venom is a highly playable slot overall, and the base game is livened up by the Jungle Bush mystery symbols feature and high value wilds. The mystery symbols can reveal Golden Egg multiplier symbols in the bonus round, all of which are hatched and added to the global win multiplier that only keeps building. This is how you can close in on the15,000x potential, as only 19 paylines limits the possible payouts in the base game. Overall, Lord Venom is a decent debut, and it will be interesting to see if Hacksaw manages to carve out a more independent path given some time.
The premium animal symbols pay between 10 and 20 x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, while the low-value fruit symbols all pay 2 x your stake for the same. Thesnake Wild symbolscan appear anywhere to step in for pay symbols, and thus help complete and/or improve line wins. The wild symbol also pays 30x your stake should you land 5 wilds on the same payline.
TheJungle Bush symbolstend to land in stacks and clusters on the grid, and they serve asMystery Symbolsin this game. This means that all instances of the jungle bush symbols turn into the same randomly chosen pay symbol whenever they appear.
You need3+ scattersanywhere in view to trigger theBonus Round, and landing3, 4, or 5 scattersawards12, 14, or 16 free spins, respectively. The Jungle Bush mystery symbols will sometimes revealGolden Egg symbolsin the bonus round, and each golden egg cracks open one by one after that. This reveals a multiplier value of x1 to x10, x25, x50, x100, or x200. All revealed multipliers are added to the global win multiplier.
Theglobal win multipliercan be seen as the “All Wins” multiplier on the right-hand side, and it never resets for as long as the bonus round lasts. This All Wins multiplier will boost all line wins on every spin after it has been created, and no multiplier is active unless you land the golden eggs first. You win+5 extra free spinsif you land3+ scattersin view on the same free spin.
Non-UK players, and anyone eligible, can purchase the bonus round for150x the stake, and this increases the top-tier RTP to 96.35 %. The bonus buy feature comes with medium volatility, and the organic hit rate of the bonus round is not revealed.
You get a very brief taste of the base game, before we purchase and trigger the bonus round at 0:19 into the 2-minute highlights video. We landed 5 triggering scatters, which was a bit surprising, and this gave us 16 free spins for starters. We managed to rack up a decent win multiplier as well, and you can see for yourself how we fared by hitting the play button below.
Well, what can we say? It kinda feels like Backseat Gaming has lived up to their name with what amounts to their debut release, and by that we mean that they’ve clearly taken the backseat with partner Hacksaw firmly planted in the driver’s seat. Lord Venom is still a pretty solid slot debut though, without being spectacular in any way. It comes across as something Hacksawg could churn out without thinking too much, which can be seen as a compliment, and the cartoonish visuals are pretty decent as well.
The base game comes with decent symbol values, but payouts are limited by having only 19 ways to form wins. The jungle bush mystery symbols are helpful at times, but this is hardly a feature we haven’t seen many times before. The big innovation in this game comes into play in the bonus round, when the mystery symbols can drastically increase the win multiplier out of the blue. This is somewhat typical for Hacksaw games one way or the other, but the15,000x potentialis above average. It comes with a decent 1 in 14 million hit rate to boot, and overall Lord Venom is well worth a closer look.
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