New Slots Round Up: 16th May – 22nd May 2026

We have plenty of new slots to get through in this week’s round up, so let’s not waste any time!

Gaming Corps throws its hat into the ring (or should that be onto the field?) with a soccer-themed slot in preparation for this summer’s World Cup. Goals to Glory – Football Fever is a scatter pays game on a 6 x 5 grid where you’ll be looking to land 8 or more symbols and hoping for some tumbling wins too.

Multipliers land on the grid randomly and then apply to the total win after all tumbles have completed, then in the bonus round, the used multis build up in a total multiplier. It’s basically Gates of Olympus but soccer-themed and with some funny cartoon animals.

Fruit Merge Megapots is another in this growing series from Big Time Gaming – a series where Mini, Midi, and Mega jackpots sit above the reels holding prizes that randomize on every spin. You’ll find 4,096 ways to win, while fruit symbols and Megapot symbols can land as Bonus symbols – this is what makes the lights around the side of the grid illuminate, and 6 or more will trigger the Hold and Spin round. Here, the Bonus symbols can land and then merge – merging Hold and Spin/Win rounds seem to be the newest trend in slots right now. I find most Big Time games are largely the same, but this is still fun for a while at least.

Wanted Salvation from Hacksaw is a remaster of one of the studio’s most famous slots: Wanted Dead or a Wild and its cowboy DuelReels. Not much has changed apart from crisper visuals and a slight drop in RTP to 96%, so some players might still prefer the original.

Blazing Coins Deluxe by Popiplay is a basic slot with 3 reels and only a 2,000x max win. The fruit symbols and jackpots give it a firmly old school feel, and the Hot Spot in the center of the grid awaits a Coin to land there and trigger the Hold and Win round. Pretty boring stuff, if I’m being honest.

Death Becomes You, the second release from Hacksaw this week, is of much higher quality. Following on from Circle of Life and Life and Death, the sombre, religious-feel is maintained, as are the expanding wilds, this time in the form of DuelReels AKA reel-covering wilds with a multiplier attached. But there are no cowboys here – it’s life vs death for a more monumental feel.

If you manage to land low-paying symbols that spell out ‘DEATH’, you’ll trigger the Duel With Death bonus. This brings respins and adds 3 lives to a Life Meter, while reels 2, 3, and 4 are covered by Death itself. Now it’s a duel involving him and the player, where you’ll be looking to stay alive while scoring as many multipliers as possible. Once you lose all the lives, the 3-reel expanded wild on-screen helps you form wins with the multiplier you scored. It’s an impressive title overall, although whether players will dig the intense theme depends on the person.

So we’re back down to earth with 3 Lucky Nuggets from Popiplay, a medium volatility, 15-payline slot that’s based around a cartoonish gold mine. It follows the ‘3 pot’ concept, although one of the pots is simply a combo of the first two. So one of the most overused slot mechanics in 2026 gets a downgrade? This one didn’t excite me at all.

Lokum Rush is another from Popiplay and it follows the same medium volatility math, so you’ll get lots of smaller wins rather than big swings. RTP is decent at 97.04% and the scatter pays mechanic will suit certain players. The theme is based around Turkish sweets, and I actually learned that ‘lokum’ is the native word for Turkish Delight, which makes sense with the symbols all being treats from that part of the world. It’s basically a Turkish-themed version of Sweet Bonanza – so scatter wins, multipliers, and cascades doing all the work.

Gemhalla Xtreme from BGaming is another sequel. The original Gemhalla from 2023 essentially works like Gates of Olympus but with Thor and all his associated imagery in place of Zeus and the Mount Olympus setting. So what does this new version do differently? It basically increases the max available multi from 500x to 1,000x (although this will land very rarely), and the max win goes from 5,000x to 10,000x. Still not that Xtreme in my opinion.

Shark & Spark, again from BGaming, is another scatter pays game, this time with a simple underwater cartoon theme. It looks quite dated, and the main special feature is the bonus round where a shark moves across a board game (called ‘Shark & Ladders’) following some dice rolls. You pick up multipliers as you go, applying that to your base wager. It feels pretty basic and I couldn’t get over the cheap-looking visuals.

Mayan Madness by Edge Labs is a rare low volatility slot, so there are wins galore but they’re not worth too much. Unsurprisingly the max win is only 5,000x, but how’s the gameplay? Well, it’s very generic: 20 paylines on a 5 x 3 grid, 5 Scatters award one of the jackpots, and 3 Bonus symbols send you to the free spins. Not much going on here unfortunately.

Rounding out this section we have 3 Pharaoh Treasure, one of the many recent releases by TaDa Gaming. It’s part of the TriLuck series from this studio, which means – you guessed it – another ‘3 pot’ slot. These games weren’t even that exciting to me to begin with, but so many developers seem to be milking the idea for all it’s worth right now. Let’s sum this up by saying it’s an Egyptian-themed, 3 pot slot with 40 paylines. The RTP is nice at 97%, but the max win is poor at 1,000x.

Now let’s move onto something that actually gets creative with our Game of the Week below.

Game of the Week

Midnight Marauder – ClusterBreaker is the latest from Relax Gaming and it’s a bit of a gem, which is probably something the main character here would like to pilfer.

This is a sequel to Midnight Marauder from 4 years ago, but the mechanics have been switched up. Yes, these are both high volatility cluster pays games, but whereas the original just dropped symbols onto a 6 x 6 grid, this sequel has a much smaller 4 x 4 board with the Cluster Breaker concept. This is where cracks can form in symbols, splitting them up into 2, 3, or 4 of the same symbol – enough to form the clusters of 5 or more that are required to land a win.

Each win doubles the current global multiplier situated to the left of the grid, and there’s a Smash ‘N’ Grab Free Spins meter to the right too – this registers the amount of winning symbols you’ve had on any given spin, and when you reach the following milestones, you’ll trigger certain features:

• 20: Between 5 and 8 symbols receive the Cluster Breaker treatment
• 40: All remaining intact symbols receive the Cluster Breaker
• 60: The Smash ‘N’ Grab Free Spins begin

So if you reach 60, you get 8 free spins and the multiplier starts on 8x as a baseline, creating bigger wins by default. The meter continues to function in this bonus feature, meaning you can retrigger all the same mechanics.

In fact, just before the round starts, you can choose to continue or gamble, potentially landing more spins and a higher multiplier (or losing it all). There are also plenty of choices for the bonus buy, including setting the global multiplier at a higher baseline for some Smash ‘N’ Grab Free Spins.

There’s a Hold & Win style round that gets triggered by landing 5 or more Coin symbols too, but this doesn’t feel like the focus of the game.

When Relax chooses to put the effort in, it can really pull off something charming and creative, and the burglar theme somehow fits perfectly with the gameplay. The stats aren’t too huge with 96.10% and a 10,000x max win, but the rest of the package is excellent.

We had Guitar Quest from Relax a few weeks ago too, which is worth a play if you haven’t already; I’m definitely looking forward to whatever comes next from this studio!

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