Repurposed with deathly intentions
Hacksaw Gaming made a major splash on the debut of its DuelReels mechanic in Wanted Dead or a Wild, and now the Malta-based firm has taken the feature to a different level in Death Becomes You.
Instead of playing out on one reel, June release Death Becomes You takes the mechanic three reels wide to spectacular effect in this ultra-noir slot from Hacksaw’s Life and Death series.
one of the developer’s darkest titles
Hacksaw’s take on the reaper in this series always veers straight to the grimmer side of the scythed one, and Death Becomes You’s “mortality vs. life” slot is no exception. One of the developer’s darkest titles of late, the slot pits players against a legion of demons and Death in pursuit of a max win of 15,000x.
Inevitable but rewarding
Death Becomes You’s evolution of the feature, pioneered in 2021’s Wanted Dead or a Wild and revisited in Phoenix DuelReels, comes in its latest slot’s Duel with Death feature.
Landing five low pay symbols spelling D-E-A-T-H across a row triggers the feature from the base game while awarding a re-spin, with players awarded three lives in the shape of illustrated hearts displayed on a life meter on the grid’s right. During the re-spin, a Death DuelReel expands to cover the three central reels and heralds a battle between the player and Death.
Players in this round start with a 5x multiplier, while Death’s can go from 2x to 100x. Every time Death wins a Duel, the player loses a life and a heart on the meter turns from full white to hollow red. The Duel resumes until all the player’s hearts turn hollow red.
You can’t avoid losing all your three lives, but the aim is to win at least one duel and collect the multiplier from Death and add it to your multipliers. Then, when the round ends, watch your multiplier get applied to pay symbols and all wins that happened during the Duel With Death.
Death Becomes You offers a buy option to trigger Duel With Death for 1,000x your stake in this high volatility slot that comes with a betting range of $0.10 to $50 and an RTP of 96.4%.
During the base game, landing a VS symbol as part of a win will see it expand into a DuelReel and trigger a duel between the player and five different demons.
Once the round starts, players and demons each land multipliers of 2x up to 100x, with the player’s multiplier showing up on the white duel strip on reels four or five and the monster’s on the red duel strip on reels one or two. Any multipliers you landed or got from defeating a monster will be applied to your payout when the round ends. Defeat all five demons, however, and you get a bonus Duel With Death.
Horror with upsides
With the two exposed aminated beating hearts a constant presence beside the reels, monochrome aesthetics, occultish beasts, demons and symbols, Death Becomes You is poles apart from Hacksaw’s recent high-energy, neon-lit recent underground racing slot Nitro Nights.
However, Hacksaw has once again proved it can execute a mechanics-rich psychological horror slot that won’t appeal to everyone but nevertheless delivers a tense, dramatic, and rewarding experience wrapped in high production values.
