New Slots Round Up: 1st August – 7th August 2026

It’s time to separate the good from the bad again in this week’s round up. There are a few games that manage to put their own spin on things, but there’s also a fair bit of déjà vu here.

Speaking of which, can you have too much of a good thing? I think the Le Bandit series from Hacksaw has firmly answered that question with its endless remakes and reskins. The latest iteration, Le Bandit Hold & Win (96.27% RTP), does change things up more than usual, but is it for the better? No, not really.

We’re now playing on a 3 x 3 board, and instead of the neat Highlighted Squares and Rainbow combination that led to Coin wins and was the crux of the original, we simply get Coin wins when there are 3 or more on the grid. Jackpots are thrown in, because why not? Of course, as the title implies, we get a Hold & Win-style bonus round too. I just want to do my best Don Corleone impression and say, “Look how they massacred my boy.”

Corpse Cart by AvatarUX is set in a supermarket staffed by zombies that seem to be selling human body parts. It’s grim but done in a fairly cartoonish manner. As for the gameplay, it’s tumbling all-ways-pays on a 5 x 4 grid. The main feature of note is Infinity Stacks, and this is where vertical stacks of 3 or more symbols of the same type will collapse down into 1 space with a multiplier attached. So 3 collapsed symbols become 1 but with a 3x applied. Of course, if this symbol lands in a win, the multi applies. It’s far from the best slot this week but it’s probably better than the AvatarUX average.

Clucks and Robbers (95.82% RTP) by Gaming Corps is a medium volatility, all-ways-pays slot with a cartoon animal aesthetic. Coins on the grid can be collected up if you land the Robber Wild on the central reel, and that same Wild can also randomly activate Boost, Streak, or Double features, leading to bigger wins from the spin.

A couple of things about this game annoy me. First, you’ll often get plenty of Coins with no Collect Wild, or a Collect Wild with no Coins – they rarely seem to overlap, which seems a little suspicious. Also, the spinning reel animation for the central reel doesn’t look right. Anyway, Clucks and Robbers is kind of fun, but by no means a classic.

Shadow of Dominion has Slotmill written all over it. With its dramatic, epic fantasy-style theme, Giant Symbols, and global multiplier that increases with every tumbling win, it’s not unlike previous Slotmill releases including Emberfall and Ragnarok. Perhaps one thing that sets this scatter pays slot apart is the Dominion Respins feature that can randomly trigger in the base game and bonus round.

Here, symbols of only 1 type fall onto the grid along with dead symbols, and as long as at least 1 new symbol lands on each tumble, the round will continue and the multiplier will keep going up. It’s like a simplified Hold & Win interlude that offers a little change of pace and a solid chance at some big wins. Because, as good as this game is, the symbol values are pretty low, so you’ll need a lot of things to stack up for you if you want to get anywhere near that 10,000x max win.

Mystic Reels from Bulletproof Games/BGaming is a fairly simple affair. The magical crystal/gemstone theme feels somehow dated, and the gameplay is pretty basic. You’re looking to land wins on 20 paylines, and if you manage to reach 4 tumbles on the same spin in the base game, you’ll trigger the free spins – 7 of them. In fact, if you kept going with more tumbles, you’d reach an even higher amount of free spins. In the bonus feature, it’s mostly the same thing, except when Wilds land, they add 1 to the reel multiplier, and these multis can of course be used in any wins during the round. It’s fine but I stand by my first impression that this feels dated.

Joker Never Retires comes from Bullshark Games, and the theme is based around the idea of an old-age clown who’s now in a retirement home. It’s pretty random, and the gameplay is a little finicky too. There are 20 paylines on the grid, and above it sits the Daily Dose conveyor belt, holding Wild and Multiplier power-ups. Each time you score a win/tumble, the conveyor belt moves along one, which can move Wilds onto the board and add values to the global multiplier.

It’s pretty fun when it all starts to hit, but this is a rare occasion if you’re spinning naturally. Of course, you can buy bonuses to force the issue, but I’m generally not a fan of that – I feel like too many studios are relying on it these days. Also, I found it hard to track wins and amounts from the UI. Bullshark Games slots often have potential, but there’s always something missing – that X factor that takes a game from decent to genuinely memorable just isn’t there.

The original Depths of Fortune came out 2 years ago, and it’s a coincidence that I’m talking about it straight after Joker Never Retires – there’s a very similar feel with a conveyor belt of power-ups outside the grid. AvatarUX even gave it a name in ‘Loaded Reel’. I actually prefer this conveyor belt because there’s more variety to the power-ups, including one which can widen the scope of the reel, allowing 2 power-ups to hit at the same time. The belt also remains in the Hold & Win bonus round, injecting some creativity into a format that most players have seen too many times.

The theme of the game was a Jules Verne-esque old-fashioned submarine concept too, which just seems to work with the mechanic. For this update, Depths of Fortune 2 expands on the idea slightly, stuffing more power ups into the Loaded Reel, adding a 4-tier jackpot, and changing some UI things around. It’s still largely the same all-ways-pays slot though, and it’s pretty decent.

Backseat Gaming is on a fiery streak at the moment. I covered Born in Hell only a couple of weeks ago, and now we have Firelord with its blazing bird-type theme. Not really sure what it’s getting at exactly, but it looks kind of cool. As for the all-ways-pays gameplay, in typical recent Backseat fashion, it just feels dull. It’s similar to Shadow of Dominion in the sense that there’s a global multiplier that jumps up with every win, but there’s really not much else going on.

The other Backseat game this week is Zombie Dawgs. Maybe these are the pets of the guys who work at the supermarket in Corpse Cart? The base game is pretty boring as it’s just a scatter pays game on a 6 x 5 grid, but when you trigger the free spins with 3 Bonus symbols, the possibility of reel multipliers opens up. You activate them with the Zombie Paw and add to them with Nuclear Multipliers, and they build over the course of the round. I think it’s technically possible to do the same on a single spin in the base game, but it never happened once during my test session, so who knows. I do miss the Backseat Gaming of old when it was putting out games like Pirate Bonanza. The latest releases are pretty boring on the whole.

I enjoyed Hacksaw’s Great Game Rockies from a few weeks ago, and with hindsight, it was clearly the start of a series, as we now have Great Game Serengeti. It’s a similar slot in most ways, and the mechanic where the hunter shoots targets above each reel to score Coins – after a Hunting Season symbol lands – is still here.

If you remember, the values of the revealed Coins correspond with the star ratings of the animals originally on the reels, and in Great Game Serengeti there’s the addition of a Stampede Reveal. This is where a Hunting Season symbol lands and only high-value animals can appear, ultimately leading to higher-value Coins. This can hit randomly, or you can buy it. It’s a small addition, but it makes an improvement to Great Game Rockies.

Rounding out this section is another animal-themed game in the form of Gorilla Fortune Punch by Relax Gaming. Unfortunately, this brings us the lowest RTP of the week at 94.00%, along with a fairly low max win of 5,000x. It’s all-ways-pays on a 5 x 3 grid, and you’ll see the dreaded 3 pots sitting above it. Yes, Relax Gaming is adding its 2 cents to the most played-out slot trend of 2026.

The pots are purple, red, and green, and can be triggered by Wilds in the corresponding colors. They allow you to spin the wheel to the left of the grid in slightly different ways when triggered, but you always end up in a Hold & Win round anyway (surprise, surprise). That being said, this round is a bit different from the standard type, and there are other touches like reel multipliers which help give Gorilla Fortune Punch a different feel. If it sounds up your tree, give it a try!

Now onto the Game of the Week below.

Game of the Week

It seems that whenever Shady Lady releases a new title, it makes its way into our Game of the Week spot. This studio is simply that consistent, and its latest slot, scatter-paying Pissed (96.05% RTP) is no exception.

Shady Lady likes to add in social commentary in many of its titles too, and Pissed centres around a character called Donk who is constantly raging at the world – an angry Gen X-type fellow. Judging by the content of the reels, the types of things that make him angry are social media influencers, hipsters, non-alcoholic IPAs, cocktails, organic food, and the like.

Donk is also a paying symbol himself, while 5 or more Donks trigger the Donk Smash, Ultra Smash, or Angry Crush. These are all attacks that remove non-Donk symbols from the grid so that more symbols can tumble in in their place. Plus if you manage to land at least 1 more Donk during the tumble, his attacks will continue for another round. Importantly, each attack can increase the value of the multiplier by 1x, and once everything has settled, that final multiplier is applied to the Donk symbols on-screen. This is how you’ll score most of your wins, so in one way, Pissed is quite a simple slot.

In the base game, the attacks come along every 15 spins or so, with each Donk symbol given a 50% chance of triggering an attack. However, if you manage to spin into the bonus round (it’s fairly difficult at 1 in 294 spins), the Donk symbols now have a 75% chance of triggering an attack, and more of them land in general, so chaos is likely to ensue.

Yes, it’s the bonus rounds where the fun begins and wins rack up fast, so you may find yourself reaching for the bonus buys to skip the base game grind. As with other Shady Lady games, there are many to choose from, including ante-bets, various shades of bonus round, Highlight Reels (which simulate 100s of spins and pick the best), and Loot Boxes, where you can unlock super power-ups like massive multipliers and more Highlight Reel-type effects.

The whole slot is solid, with a few extra features thrown in that aren’t even mentioned in the instructions, and Shady Lady doesn’t seem to be hiding the fact that you’ll want to dip into the bonus buys to enjoy this game to the fullest. It’s already a high volatility game, so just be careful, as bonus buy spending can quickly balloon in slots like this, but it’s certainly fun chasing that 20,000x max win.

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