Stormforged Slot – Free Demo
Provider:
Hacksaw Gaming
Stormforged is Hacksaw Gaming's Norse slot on 5 reels, 4 rows and 14 paylines, and everything interesting in it comes from the Portals. The Hand of Surtur rips down a reel to make one, a wild caught in its path carries 2x to 200x, and a Treasure Chest pays 5x to 2500x — which is how the 12,500x cap…
Play Stormforged demo
Stormforged
There is no question about the origin of inspiration for this game, and indeed, you surmised it - Norse mythology! The two realms each carry their own bonus feature, Surtur's Vengeance and Warriors of the Storm. Hacksaw Gaming have definately contrived to seize a sensation of the collision of ice and fire. Surtur, the Frost Sword, the Viking and the Hammer of Thor all appear as scatter symbols. One bonus game is situated in the blazing domain of Muspelheim and the other in the midst of a furious blizzard in the frozen domain of Midgard. Midgard is reached through the Frost Sword scatter, which only comes into play once Surtur's Vengeance is already running.
It appears like a conventional arrangement at first look, with it's 5 reels, 4 rows and 14 paylines, but Hacksaw Gaming are attempting new things here and is presenting a feature called Portals to Muspelheim. Those 14 lines pay left to right and must start on the leftmost reel.
The Portal mechanics is a straightforward notion. The Hand of Surtur itself substitutes for every symbol in the paytable. When the Hand of Surtur scatter symbol lands and triggers, it tears downward to the bottom of the reel and forms a Portal to Muspelheim. Portals act as wild symbols and stand in for all other paying symbols, and if the Hand of Surtur tears through a WILD symbol it discloses a multiplier value. That value is applied to the entire Portal and influences any winning lines that pass through it.
For an extra wager, players can buy the bonus game features directly from the main game by pushing the BUY BONUS button.
Portals, chests and the two bonus features in Stormforged (Hacksaw Gaming)
The Bonus Buy is a feature that gives direct access to the bonus games for a bigger bet, and each buy has its own theoretical RTP. The RTP when buying BONUSHUNT FEATURESPINS™ is 96.27%. Only Surtur's Vengeance returns less than that. When buying 2 HANDS OF SURTUR FEATURESPINS™ it is 96.35% and when buying 3 HANDS OF SURTUR FEATURESPINS™ it is 96.43%, and when buying SURTUR'S VENGEANCE the RTP is 96.24%. The 3 Hands of Surtur buy is the only one of the six that sits above the game's own 96.41%. When buying SURTUR'S FURY it is 96.29%, and when buying WARRIORS OF THE STORM it is 96.34%.
WILD symbols cannot emerge on the top row of the reels, but wild symbols stand in for all symbols in the paytable. In Surtur's Vengeance a reel can hold only one sticky WILD, and once it has one no further WILDs land there. The potential Portal multiplier values are 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, 100x and 200x. Nine of those fifteen values sit at 10x or below. If a winning line is influenced by more than one multiplier, the multipliers are first summed together and then applied to the win.
In the main game, if the Hand of Surtur tears through a Treasure Chest symbol it will splinter and grant its contents as an additional cash prize. Chests can also be broken by the icy sword during Surtur's Vengeance, where they are destroyed rather than collected. That prize is worth 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50, 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000 or 2500 times your bet. A 2500x chest struck by a 5x Portal would therefore reach the 12,500x cap on that one hit.
3 Surtur scatter symbols emerging at the same moment in the base game trigger 10 free spins in the Surtur's Vengeance bonus feature. The same round can be bought outright, at a stated RTP of 96.24%. 4 symbols grant 12 free spins and 5 symbols grant 14. In this bonus, the first WILD symbol that lands on each reel turns sticky until the close of the bonus. Any WILDs already sitting on the reels when the bonus is awarded are carried over from the base game and become sticky too. When the Frost Sword scatter symbol triggers it sets off a Portal to Midgard, and an icy sword cuts downward to the bottom of the reel, smashing any WILD symbols or Treasure Chests in its route. Like the Hand of Surtur, the Frost Sword only activates if the Portal it makes would be part of or create a winning combination. 3 Viking scatter symbols at the same moment in the base game instead trigger the Warriors of the Storm bonus feature with 10 free spins. 4 Vikings award 12 free spins and 5 award 14, the same ladder as the Surtur side. There the Hammer of Thor scatter symbol forges the reel it landed on into a Storm Reel, and it endures until the close of the bonus feature. Storm Reels are full wild reels and substitute for all other paying symbols. On each spin, all Storm Reels disclose either a Viking Warrior or are packed with a furious STORM. A reel filled with STORM is wild for that spin only, then moves one step to the left at the start of the next free spin, pushing any Storm Reel in its way along with it. The Rogue can be worth 2x, 3x, 4x or 5x, the Shieldmaiden 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x or 10x and the Berserker 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, 100x or 200x, and extra Surtur or Viking symbols landing concurrently in the bonus grant additional free spins. Two extra scatters add 2 free spins, three add 4, four add 6 and five add 8.
Verdict after 435 spins
Stormforged is a well crafted slot, there is no question about that, and Hacksaw Gaming evidently have immense resources to pour into their productions. The volatility is rated 5 out of 5. The games are appearing increasingly like video games. But good looking slots don't stretch all the way if the potential and solid game mechanics are not included in the bundle. My own run wagered 435.00 and won 306.40 back.
Max win in this game is 12,500x your bet. When that amount is reached the round ends at once and any remaining free spins are discarded. With Portal multipliers climbing up to 200x and Berserkers in the Storm Reels worth another 200x, the ceiling is at least attainable in theory, but that would demand a very particular set of reels. Multipliers on a line are added rather than multiplied, so a spread of small values counts for a good deal less than one large one.
When playing the game I never triggered a bonus at all, and across 435 spins at a stake of 1.00 the balance moved from 5,000.00 down to 4,871.40, a return of 70.4%. The best single spin was number 216, which paid 119.60 and lifted the balance to 4,983.70. It never once climbed above the 5,000.00 it started with, and only 84 spins of 435 paid anything. Of those 84, 44 returned less than the stake. The Portals in the base game are a bit enjoyable and the only thing that keeps this game somewhat engaging. The longest run without a win was 29 spins, ending on spin 417, which is what a 5 of 5 volatility profile looks like from the inside. But without the bonus the symbols are low paying, and there is no sense of great potential to keep one thrilled. The lowest the balance got was 4,865.10.
The permitted bet levels on this slot are between 0.10 and 75.00 credits. I played the whole session at 1.00, near the bottom of that range. Feature buys, though, can surpass this cap. The RTP, meanwhile, in this game is 96.41%. That is a long-run figure, and 435 spins is nowhere near long enough to approach it. It falls or climbs slightly depending on which bonus you buy. If you like the look of Stormforged, Hand of Anubis is another Hacksaw Gaming slot on the site, and Thor Hammer Time covers the same Norse ground from Nolimit City.