Empire V Slot Machine
The ‘V’ in the title of the Empire V video slot, stands for Vampire and as soon as the game loads up, you will see a rich variety of blood-sucking beasts, along with wolves, deadly potions, innocent wenches and of course, no self-respecting slot of this type would be complete without some scary bats. It’s classic stuff and comes with some equally classic gameplay features, such as a wild symbol, scatter icon and a free spins round. It’s been released by Austrian casino games developer Novomatic and comes with a number of their signature features, such as a the fact that the chances of getting winning lines increases during the free spins.
Something else that’s common across the Novoamtic online slots range, is a commitment to fair play and high returns to players, while Empire V is one of a growing number of their games that’s fully mobile optimised for play across all the popular mobile and tablet platforms. It’s got a decent potential bet range, (albeit, to a fairly low maximum), plus there’s an option to test it out via the free Empire V video slots found at casinos that use games and software from this respected supplier.
This is a 5 reel slot game, where symbols land across just 10 paylines. Instead of clearly defined reels, the symbols seem to float above the eerie background image, which is a haunting picture of an old house in a forest. Perfect for the vampire theme and the fitting soundtrack played out on an organ serves to heighten the fear even more. But don’t be afraid, it’s a fun game that won’t bite you, unless you want it to.
Under the Spell of Empire V
To find out how it all works and what each symbol is valued at, you could review the paytable, which reveals that the playing card Club, Spade, Hearts and Diamonds symbols will pay out the lower value wins. Like all standard icons in this game, matching symbols will need to stop on an active payline, running from the left side, without a break. There’s 5x the amount staked per line when 3 of the Spade or Club symbols appear, while 4 of either will be worth a win of 25x and full lines will pay out 100x.
Hearts and Diamonds are worth up to 200x and then rising in value, we see the red potion bottle and a candle, each of which pays a top prize of 500x the line stake, while the running wolf and flappy bat are both given maximum values of 1000x. A couple of beautiful women are next up, with a seductive blonde and one of the vampire’s evil-looking sirens each paying between 400x and 2500x, depending on how many reels they land on. The handsome young vampire, who wouldn’t look out of place in a Twilight movie, pays winnings of 5x the line stake when he’s on reels 1 and 2, right up to a massive 10,000x if you land him right across a payline.
Another symbol that only needs to be on reels 1 and 2 is the fantastically-designed wild symbol, which is a grinning skull/moon image, complete with bats looking like the nostrils. It’s worth up to 50,000x the line stake if you manage to land a full line. But it’s more likely that this will appear on just a reel or 2 at a time, and if it’s in the right place to complete a winning combination by substituting for any other standards symbol, players will still win a prize, even if there’s a gap in the sequence. Should you land 3 or 4 matching symbols across a line, and the wild is on any remaining reels to the right side, across the same payline, it effectively extends the run and you get some of the massive rewards that come with full lines in this game.
Bonus Spins to get your Teeth into.
The creepy castle is a scatter symbol, so it can be literally scattered in any places to create a win, with 3, 4, or 5 of them being worth 5x, 50x, or 1,000x the total bet respectively. Once these prizes have been paid out, you’re rewarded even further with 10 free spins, and to help give them more winning potential, the Club, Spade, Heart and Diamond symbols are removed.
This just leaves the unique picture symbols, so it’s easier to land matching ones across the reels, and if the scatter symbol stops in any 3 or more places during these games, the whole thing starts again once the current spins are done.
Staking on the Vampires
Generally speaking, vampires don’t like stakes, but you’ll need a stake of at least 2.00 to play for real cash, and this can be raised to a high limit of 10.00 per spin. At the higher bet levels, the rewards can clearly be huge, but even at the minimum wager, the Empire V video slot can return some fairly impressive prizes.
There’s an Auto option that saves time by spinning the reels without any need to click for each round, although unusually for a Novomatic slot machine, there’s no gamble feature.
Batty About Vampire-Themed Slots
There’s a wide choice of online slot games dedicated to the undead, some of which are quite comical and others which aim for the jugular, with lashings of blood and gore. One such game is the Dracula video slot from NetEnt, where the Prince of Darkness sits brooding in a chair until a feature is triggered and he explodes into a flock of bats. Lovely.
Merkur have given their vampire-themed slot game the simple title of ‘Vampires’ and it has some interesting features, such as a free spins round where symbols transform into extra wilds, plus there’s some great 3D graphics of shadowy flying bats and a gamble feature that can help turn small payouts into huge rewards.
Worth Getting in a flap About?
This moody and atmospheric slot machine really captures the theme and is sure to attract players to it at Novomatic-powered online casinos worldwide. The high-quality of the images, great soundtrack and high returns to players are some highlights, but the massive rewards from some of the more valuable symbols are truly impressive.
If there’s anything we didn’t like about the Empire V video slot, it’s the lack of a gamble feature and the relatively low maximum bet, which makes this a game more aimed at casual players than any high rollers.
But if the stakes suit you, then this is a great-looking, reliable game, with a rewarding bonus round, and that’s been independently certified for fair play, that we are happy to recommend.
