New Slots Round Up: 25th April – 1st May 2026

We start this week’s round up with a couple of games from AvatarUX, and this first one feels like a miss rather than a hit.

We’ve already had Crypto Crown 40 and Crypto Crown 20 where the paylines dropped from 40 to 20. Now the paylines drop to 10 in Crypto Crown 10, plus the RTP has fallen to 95.97%. The win values for symbols have gone up though, which makes sense with the reduced amount of paylines. Overall, this is still a very bland slot though.

Can Pots of Power: Zeus pick things back up? Anything with the ‘3 pots’ concept feels overplayed to me at this point, so the title had me expecting the worst. Fortunately, this isn’t a 3 pot slot.

It’s fairly simple in the base game with 25 paylines on a 5 x 3 grid, then when you land a Bonus symbol to trigger the Hold & Win round, a 3-layered wheel comes first and decides: the amount of spins, the size of the grid, and the amount of Storm Boxes you get. These boxes move around randomly on each spin in the Hold & Win round, adding values to the Coins. It’s not the best thing this week but it’s actually not too bad either.

Great Game Rockies from Hacksaw is one of those slots that relies on a simple but solid formula. The hunting theme also intertwines well with the core mechanic. Yes, there are targets above each of the 5 reels, and when a Hunting Season symbol lands, the hunter aims and shoots at each target. Then, any animal symbols on the reels with hit targets transform into Coins and Traps.

Each animal has a star rating, and that decides the color/value of the Coin upon transformation; also, a 4-star animal turns into a Trap, which collects all the values on the grid. The bonus round maintains the same idea but with more Hunting Season symbols, then the second level of the bonus allows you to upgrade each animal’s star rating via a standard win. It’s kind of repetitive but I enjoyed this and had some great wins during my test, especially when the Traps land.

Next we have two “new” releases in the famous Le series from Hacksaw (Le Football Fan and Le Hooligan). These are both soccer-themed, clearly in preparation for the upcoming World Cup, but they’re basically reskins of the original Le game: Le Bandit from 2023. I do really like the original, as many people do. It’s a classic, but reskins often feel lazy.

It seems like the Le slots are turning into the new Big Bass, with new, low-effort versions every month. Still, if you want to get into the spirit of the upcoming soccer tournament, give these a go. They’re both the same game but with differing stats: Le Hooligan has a 10,000x max win and 96.34% RTP, while Le Football Fan has a poor 2,500x max win and a 96.41% RTP. Basically, it seems they’ve been made for different markets, so we won’t expect both to be available everywhere.

Behind Bars: Masterplan by Bullshark Games is a medium volatility slot AKA smaller wins but more often. It’ll also be good for the scatters pays fans, and these scatter pays are boosted by multipliers which can randomly apply to the whole of any reel – any scatter wins crossing over a reel with a multiplier receive the multiplication benefit.

Then the bonus round takes a different tack, turning things into more of a Hold & Win round. The main symbol is Instant Win, which contains a multiplier to work on the current wager. However, there are also reel multipliers again – these work on Instant Wins, and can also be built up by the Adder, Multiplier, Epic Adder, and Epic Multiplier. Great fun overall!

Instant Blitz comes from Gaming Corps, but it’s actually been made by a new division within Gaming Corps called…Instant Blitz. So maybe we can expect a series of these games, and fair play to the studio for creating something fresh. This feels like a mix between slots, scratchcards, and Slingo. The idea is to land clusters of 3 or more symbols, with each game containing 4 rounds.

Along with the clusters, Lightning symbols can expand the grid, plus you can score Multipliers, a Wheel Bonus, and Extra Rounds, but after each game ends, everything resets. It’s also worth noting that wagers start pretty small, so it’s good for low bets. Most games end without a cluster win and Instant Blitz is not going to change the world of slots just yet, but it’s good to see something new.

Coins of Valhalla 20,000 also comes from Gaming Corps, and before I start on this one: I did call out 4 Gym Pigs – Porky Power from the same developer last week for some really bad AI art, and while the quality here is better, I can tell some of the art is AI-generated. You might care, or you might not, but it’s something to be aware of for me personally. I always hope that even if the art is AI-generated, attention has been paid to the making of the game.

So, the gameplay here: to start with, it’s an all ways pays slot on a 6 x 4 grid. You trigger the bonus round with a Scatter symbol, and here, a 3 pot feel emerges – you can receive the powers of Odin, Thor, or Loki who bring multipliers, free spins, and synced reels respectively. Coin symbols also collect in a bonus pot. Nothing too unique, but competent.

In Digger’s Dough by Relax, the main grid works normally with scatters pays from 4 or more symbols, but above the grid sits a section of Block Symbols, and these are activated when a winning symbol explodes on the top row of the main grid.

Within the Block Symbols area you’ll find Empty Blocks (they don’t do anything), various types of Destroyer (these destroy Block Symbols to access more features), Multiplier Blocks (to influence the global multiplier for that spin), and Gems. Each block on the main grid has a color attached, and – for example – if the Blue Gem lands, all Blue symbols will be destroyed. This slot has a tidy puzzle feel to it, and Digger’s Dough is definitely good for some fun this weekend.

Gearlab Genius is the second one from Bullshark, and the second to feature multipliers above the reels. Bullshark does tend to stick to the same mechanics over and over, which is not necessarily a bad thing. There are also synced reels at play here – they can randomly activate to increase your chance of landing wins within the all ways pays framework. It’s the synced reels feature which is pulled into the bonus round too, and they have a higher chance of landing here. So this game feels kind of subtle – it’s not the most ‘hooky’ concept out there, but if you like steampunk themes, this could be up your street.

Game of the Week

Fortuna is the Roman goddess of luck, chance, and fate, basically the personification of fortune both good and bad, so she’s an apt figure for the world of slots. In Rise of Fortuna, she sits to the right of the grid in a coquettish way, winking at you as you play.

If you can keep your eyes on the grid, you’ll see that things play out over standard paylines – 14 of them. But the main special feature of the game is Fortuna Wheels, and these can land on reels 1, 3, and 5. If you’ve played SixSixSix and Pray For Six – both also from Hacksaw – you’ll be familiar with this concept. The Wheels (3 different types) pop up and they contain a mix of additive and multiplicative multipliers to act on the total in the Cash Bar at the top of grid.

The Wheels also contain Jackpot prize slices, and these grab you a win from the 4-tier, in-game jackpot. Wheels are what this game is all about, so in that sense, Rise of Fortuna can feel a little one dimensional, but it is great when you get multiplicative multipliers as they can do big things to your total.

The bonus round doesn’t offer all that much new, just more wheels, and the second level of bonus just takes away the lowest value Wheel for better spins. It’s not the best slot of all time, but everything looks colorful and lush and the max win is 10,000x. So in a relatively lowkey week, Rise of Fortuna is worth a session this weekend.

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