New Slots Round Up: 13th September – 19th September 2025

It’s time for the latest New Slots Round-Up – here’s what’s hitting the reels this week!

Always Up! is a new game from BGaming. You can tell this studio has been trying to think a little outside the box with its releases this year, which is admirable, but I’m not sure this one hits the mark. Also the strange dragon character with tiny human hands is pretty jarring!

As for the gameplay, it’s very simple with only 3 reels and 5 paylines. It feels like this slot is going for the same market as all the Fat Panda releases we’ve seen.

The stats aren’t very meaty either – we’re talking 95.07% RTP and a max win of 559x. This max can be achieved in the bonus game, which reminds me of a crash game. Basically, you pick one of 5 fireworks in a race skyward, and the further your rocket reaches, the higher the multiplier you receive – no reel spinning. It’s kind of fun, and you can land some decent multiplier wins, but there won’t be enough depth overall to keep experienced players hooked long-term.

Next up is Wild Tiger 2, another title from BGaming. Here, the RTP is looking better at 97%, and so is the max win at 5,000x. This is actually a sequel to Wild Tiger from last year, with the visuals being updated for a more playful feel. Think cartoony animals doing martial arts like in Tiger Legends or Fortune Pandas.

In the original Wild Tiger, the standout feature was the fact you could choose the amount of paylines to spin with, from 20 to 100. The more paylines, the bigger your bet, and the RTP stayed the same so you could essentially modulate volatility. In Wild Tiger 2, that feature is maintained, with Expanding Wilds and a Hold and Win bonus round thrown in. There are a few multiplier ideas tacked on to the Hold and Win gameplay too, giving it some extra punch.

Next up we have a couple of slots themed around Oktoberfest, the German beer drinking festival which starts this weekend.

The first is Oktobearfest from Popiplay, and yes, there are bears involved. Wacky cartoon bears, in fact. The polka/yodelling music is certainly fun too, and the max win of 30,000x is the highest out of all games this week. We also have 4,096 ways to win in an all ways pays format.

When the bonus round is triggered you have 3 options to choose from: Beer Dive, Drink Off, and Thirst For Wurst (which doesn’t quite make sense, but we’ll let that slide). In Beer Dive, up to 3 Wild Reels can help you form wins; in Drink Off, you get up to 6 random Wilds; and in Thirst For Wurst, you can trigger a Hold and Win-style minigame.

I definitely had more fun playing Oktobearfest than Lucky Lager x9990. Another slot from BGaming, this feels similar to Always Up! in that the base game is very basic, while the bonus round is simply a way to achieve a multiplier to apply to your wager. This time it’s done by spinning reels, which can reach up to – you guessed it – 9,990x. If you like this dynamic, I will admit this type of bonus game is a rarity, but overall I found Lucky Lager x9990 flat (pun intended), despite the polished theme.

Read on for The Count, our Game of the Week from Hacksaw Gaming…

Game of the Week

After Oktoberfest, Halloween season will be looming in the distance, and The Count is staking (again, pun intended) its claim for this year’s spooky slot of choice. It’s a Hacksaw game through and through – you can probably tell just by looking at it. The vintage animation style and black and white coloring remind one of Rad Maxx, Booze Bash, and more. Other developers have had a stab at vampire-themed slots lately too – Mystery Bats and Old Drac from Backseat Gaming spring to mind (in fact, Hacksaw had a hand in those via its OpenRGS system).

In The Count the gameplay is typically Hacksaw too. We have a 5 x 5 grid with 19 paylines, and special symbols like Wild Bats, which are Multiplier Wilds. There are Epic Wild Bats too, spreading their multiplier values out to other symbols on the grid.

Then, the most memorable special symbol is the Bloody Wild. This starts with a vampire’s chalice landing on-screen, and if it can provide at least one win, a cascade of blood will fall from the top of the reel into the cup – it’s essentially an expanding wild.

The max win here is 12,500x, and there’s a sense you can get some pretty tasty wins even in the base game from a combination of the above mechanics.

Then, landing at least 3 FS symbols will trigger the bonus rounds. We have Bat to the Bone, where you get 10 free spins and an increased number of Wild Bat symbols. Then in Rest In Pieces, a progressive symbol counter appears above the reels, tracking any wins involving the 5 low-paying symbols (10, J, Q, K, A).

If you manage to fill up all 5 meters, all these low-paying symbols will become Wild Bat symbols for the rest of the round. I really wanted to see how this worked, but even with quite a few bonus buys I never managed to fill up all 5 meters – it must be a very rare occurrence, but I can imagine it would massively supercharge your grid.

There’s also a hidden bonus round that can only be unlocked by landing 5 FS symbols, but this is similarly hard as nails to achieve.

The Count is another competent, visually and aurally-charming slot from Hacksaw. There’s nothing radically new, but it’s good, spooky fun, and it can be pretty generous too. The bonus buys and ante-bets will accelerate the fun, but even plain base spins can be rewarding.

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