New Slots Round Up: 8th August – 14th August 2026

Another week, another batch of slots, and the ‘3 pot’/Le Bandit trends are still going strong!

Toad Town from Backseat Gaming is good for a few laughs with no pots or raccoons in sight. It pokes a bit of fun at cowboy-themed slots, especially those with DuelReels, like Duel at Dawn. In Toad Town they’re called VS symbols, and when they land they expand to cover the reel (if they have a chance to create a win) while a topless cowboy toad in jeans swings a lasso and pulls in one of the 2 available multipliers, creating a wild multiplier reel.

It’s a little strange that there’s no opponent, just 1 toad – I thought that was the point of these kinds of reels? There are also X symbols, which similarly expand, but their multiplier is already decided – although they can then multiply VS multipliers for some big numbers. All this helps form wins across the 15 paylines, but without bonus buys the special symbols hardly ever land, so big wins feel few and far between.

Totem Tower Bonanza from the same studio has a similarly dry feel to it. The main special feature is these Wild Totem symbols, which work as Multiplier Wilds but can also stretch out to cover the whole reel under certain bonus conditions. See, my problem with Backseat slots is that they have good ideas, but they’re often quite simple, and then they hardly ever hit their full potential – even with bonus buys switched on. And if you’re just spinning naturally, forget about it. In that case, these games are dry and dull, despite the colorful visuals.

3 Orbs of Zeus by Popiplay is one of the most unoriginal slot concepts you could think of right now – a medium volatility 3 pot title with an Ancient Greece/Zeus theme and a 4-tier jackpot. If you’re still in the market for a trend that’s been beaten to death by this point, you can load this up and potentially trigger 3 types of Hold & Win round. In Collect, you get Zeus Blue symbols that collect all the Coin values on the reels, while in Double, the Zeus Green symbols double those values. Finally, in Mystery, the Zeus Red symbol transforms into a jackpot symbol. I’ll give Popiplay credit for the visuals – they’re pretty cool here – but I’m just tired of this slot genre now.

St. Patrick’s Pots from BGaming had me facepalming too. At least the RTP is nice and high at 97.75%, but it’s another medium volatility 3 pot game with a 4-tier jackpot. This time the 3 features are Boost, Jackpot, and Min Coin. In Boost, Purple symbols multiply the value of coins in their row, then in Jackpot you can land jackpot prizes by scoring multiple Jackpot symbols and building up a meter, while in Min Coin the minimum coin value is 3x your wager. The aesthetic here has some kind of magical, anime leprechaun feel, and I was just glad when I’d finished my test – before I realised this is far from the last 3 pot game this week.

I mentioned DuelReels earlier, and they show up for real in Shadows Inc by Hacksaw. This game has some kind of cyberpunk ninja (with a Squid game look) theme, working across 14 paylines with 96.28% RTP and a 15,000x max win. The visuals are bright and in your face, while the music has traditional Japanese elements mixed in with modern beats that ramp up as the wins start to hit. If you’ve played a game with DuelReels before, you’ll know just what to expect. The main addition here is in the second tier of bonus round (called Wild Slayers) where the Slicer mechanic will randomly add a full row of Wilds. There’s nothing too original here, but it’s Hacksaw so it’s competent.

Viking Legacy: Hold & Win is the first of 3 slots from Peter & Sons this week. The title didn’t signal it specifically, but guess what… It’s another medium volatility 3 pot game with a 4-tier jackpot. The bonus rounds are a bit different here, at least:

• Vault: The grid starts with 6 Coins and each time a Hammer lands it collects the value on the board.
• Infinity: All Coins are collected and removed from the grid on each spin, theoretically opening up all spaces on the grid for every spin. However, this was the lowest paying of the 3 rounds in my test session.
• Multiplier: A multiplier reel above the grid multiplies the value of each new Coin that lands.

The cartoon viking theme is not bad, but a little low-effort compared to what we usually get from Peter & Sons. It also reminded me of another recent game from this studio: Roman Glory.

The original Fist of Destruction by Hacksaw Gaming came out around 2 and a half years ago, and now we’re back with Fist of Destruction Megamultiplier. Fist Symbol Wild Reels were the main attraction in the original slot, which was clearly designed around a fighting video game theme. The cool thing was that Fist Symbols belonged to either fighter, and when they landed, they could potentially ‘punch’ through symbols of the enemy as they expanded from bottom to top, gaining a multiplier in the process.

In the free spins, this was taken a step further, as punching the enemy scored points which could trigger an Epic Drop with even more Fist Symbols. Basically, The whole game had this meaningful extra layer that worked really well.

This new version doesn’t add much to the gameplay – it’s the first Megamultiplier game from Hacksaw, and there will likely be more coming. It’s essentially similar to Pragmatic Play’s Super Scatter feature, but here you can land the max win (15,000x) if you hit enough Megamultiplier symbols. The RTP has also dropped a touch to 96.23%.

There’s a lot going on visually in Boombear Bros from Bullshark, maybe a bit too much. But the foundation of the gameplay is: this is a cluster pays slot and you need to land clusters of 5 or more symbols of the same type. On top of that we have various power-ups, like the Fire Power Bomb, which causes an explosion and adds cell multipliers to affected squares. There’s also the Ice Power Bomb, which adds matching symbols within its reach.

Bullshark games can be frustrating though – a bit like Backseat’s games, they’re often packed with solid ideas, but they never really seem to hit in a satisfying way. Like the cell multipliers will rarely help you out in the base game. It takes the bonus round – where the multipliers become sticky – to create some true excitement and momentum.

Dragon Guardian: 3 Pots is the second one from Peter & Sons this week, and our fourth 3 pot game of the week! The second from this provider, in fact! There are some major positives here though, which help redeem it. For a start, the visual style is very cool, looking like some kind of stop-motion TV show about medieval times and dragons. We also have a flaming Collect Zone square which is ever-present on the grid, but its size can change from 2×2 to 5×5, and any Coins which land within it are collected.

Of course, there are 3 different pots, but rather than the usual tweaks to the Hold & Win round, the power ups are all concerned with the Collect Zone. In the Blue Gem Bonus Game, the size of the Collect Zone square corresponds to the attached multiplier, and by collecting Gems, you can keep it big and with a nice multiplier attached. In the Red game, you get 2 squares moving around, and in the Green game, you get a much bigger grid to play on. So this is easily the best 3 pot game in a long while because it diverges from the typical formula and has an amazing art style – well done Peter & Sons for making me enjoy something I usually can’t stand. But I still don’t forgive you for Viking Legacy: Hold & Win!

The other bane of my life aside from 3 pot slots is Le Bandit, and he’s shown up again this week with yet another rehash. In fact, Le Clubber is simply a reskin of Le Bandit but set in a nightclub. It’s getting a bit ridiculous now, and that’s pretty much all I have to say. I hope something new comes along soon, cos things are getting pretty repetitive in the world of slots.

Now onto Game of the Week below…

Game of the Week

Bloody Mary: Pray for Prey is our third game from Peter & Sons, and it comes with a 30,000x max win, which is relatively high. The other stats show RTP is 96.10% and there are technically 259 paylines. Well, wins happen via ‘Connected Ways’, which is a bit like all ways pays, except the symbols need to connect horizontally, vertically, or diagonally to form a line, rather than simply landing left to right. It makes for something a bit different, that’s for sure.

The rules mention random highlighted squares appearing at the start of each spin, and I get the impression you’re meant to be able to spot these, but I couldn’t see them myself. Still, if a Special symbol (pentagram) lands, it turns these random highlighted squares into Wilds, sometimes with multipliers, plus it adds 3 more Wilds elsewhere on the grid. Wilds and multipliers can obviously help you land bigger wins, so there’s plenty of potential here. If you’re lucky, you might land a Super Special symbol too, and this creates even more Wilds!

Landing 3 Golden Key symbols triggers the Free Spins (7 spins), where these Wilds stay sticky for the duration of the round. The attached multiplier can also be increased if another Wild is added on the same space. During these rounds, extra Golden Keys add another free spin too.

Then, if you manage to trigger the Super Free Spins by landing 2 Golden Keys plus 1 Red Key, the Wild Multipliers can build much more rapidly – essentially doubling each time. You’ll be very lucky to get to this point (unless you use bonus buys), but it’s likely the key to unlocking that big max win. Also, because things tend to build up by the end of the free spins, you’re always offered an extra spin at the end of the round for a price, and sometimes buying it will pay off.

The aesthetic of the game reminded me of the Darkstalkers video game. Very cartoony and gothic, but with a blood-red, horror vibe and scantily clad female characters too. Well, there’s one, the titular Bloody Mary, who appears to be some kind of monster-slaying nun and isn’t afraid to get a bit of blood on her outfit. It’s an interesting vibe and really shows Peter & Sons flexing its creative muscle. And in a fairly average week, Bloody Mary and its ghoulish gameplay stood out.

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