New Slots Round Up: 18th October – 24th October 2025

Cluster pays and scatter pays slots are popular this week. In fact, it’s a very packed Round Up featuring 12 games in total. Let’s separate the innovative releases from the predictable ones and see which titles actually deserve your spins.

It’s been quite the year for Smokey the Raccoon. He’s been the star of 4 new games in 2025. In fact, we can now make that 5.

Le Santa marks the latest installment in the Le series in preparation for Christmas, but whereas each previous version has been distinct in some way, Le Santa is simply a reskin of Le King. And Le King was perhaps the least imaginative so far, mimicking much of Le Bandit. So if you enjoyed the tumbling cluster pays, rainbows, and coins of Le Bandit and Le King, you will likely enjoy this Christmas redo. I just hope the next game in this series gets back to adding in new features.

Neon Frames feels a little different from Backseat Gaming‘s usual output. Instead of being character or story-driven like Chicken Man or Pirate Bonanza, Neon Frames falls back on the fruits aesthetic. Some people like this, and so Backseat are perhaps trying to capture a new audience.

This is a cluster pays slot where Multiplier Wilds are central to the gameplay. They often help form wins, and when they do so, they leave behind a highlighted square. This can then be triggered into manifesting another Wild if a Trigger symbol lands. It’s a fairly simple game overall, and this combination of Wild and Trigger never really hits much in the base game – it does more so in the bonus round because the highlighted squares become sticky.

Fisherman Slam feels like it was rushed out. It basically emulates Gates of Olympus, as it’s a slot with a scatter pays format and multipliers, plus there’s a bonus round where any multipliers that get used are thrown into the total multiplier field. We’ve seen it a million times before. OK, there’s a hold and win-esque round too, but that’s something we see even more often. Plus, some of the animations look a little cheap, and some of the UI decisions feel a bit off. Not the usual standard we’ve come to expect for modern slots.

Black Friday certainly has more personality. After the horrors of Sew (the last game from Shady Lady, and a great one) things are turned down a touch, but this is still an edgy game with plenty to say. It reads like a critique of American consumer culture, where customers treat shopping on Black Friday as warfare.

The base game takes place on a 5 x 4 grid with 30 paylines. Each symbol is either a product from the store or a shopper, and sometimes you’ll get Cops, Protestors, or Politicians showing up. Each of those are smacked off the screen by a car which acts as a Wild, driving one space down the grid during each respin – Trump and Elon even make appearances!

The bonus game is where you’ll see even more action, and it has a unique flow. Shoppers advance down the grid, but they’re taken out one by one by various weapons, triggered by three screens at the bottom of the grid. Every time a shopper gets hit, you receive their score. So while this game won’t be for everyone, it’s another strong statement from Shady Lady.

Golden Explorer from TaDa Gaming isn’t a slot, but a Keno-style pick game where players bet on which gems will emerge from the ground. The rarer the gem, the higher the potential payout, creating a more engaging game than traditional Keno.

We recently added slots from AvatarUX to SweepsPlays, so you can have a browse through this studio’s whole back catalog now. That includes the PopWins series that AvatarUX is known for – that’s PopNoir, ArcanaPop, and MonkeyPop to name a few, with the latter being a particular favorite of mine. Then this week, AvatarUX released two slots in the form of Joker’s Spin Fest and Diamond Dez.

Joker’s Spin Fest didn’t fill me with excitement as I was loading it up, but it actually contains a nice little concept where you can choose to re-wager anything you win, which then brings a global multiplier into the mix. The visuals and 3 x 3 grid feel a little basic, but that decision making element creates an interesting rhythm.

Diamond Dez is fun too, conjuring up images of British heist movies. The base game is a cascading scatter pays one with the potential for Expanding Wilds, which can feel a little counterintuitive in a pays anywhere game, but I’m not complaining. They can help form wins and each carries a multiplier from 2x to 10x.

Things heat up in the bonus round, triggered by 4 or more Bonus symbols. Now there are more multipliers in the form of Multiplier Vaults, plus a progressive meter along the top, which you fill by registering wins. If you hit 10, you’ll unlock Time to Shine mode, which means 3 more free spins and a higher chance of special symbols. You also have three levels of bonus buy, plus an ante bet, all listed under ‘Xpress’. A tidy new game from AvatarUX.

Burning Chilli 243 from BGaming has a very healthy 97% RTP, but its max win is only 500x. The game is simple – it’s all ways pays on a 5 x 3 grid, creating 243 possible lines. Interestingly, the bonus round changes the rules so it becomes pay anywhere, starting from 3 symbols. If you want something basic with a hard rock soundtrack, this could be the slot for you!

The second (of three) slots from BGaming this week is Golden Paw Hold & Win, featuring a cat genie and an Arabian setting. In the hold and win round you unlock new rows as you land more coins, eventually creating an 8 x 5 grid – it’s a lot like the famous Dragon Link or Lightning Link land-based games. Also the paylines in the main game can be formed in an all ways pays manner. So nothing original, but at least it looks great.

The third BGaming slot is Wild Wick, which also has a nice 97.35% RTP. I spied a revolver symbol as soon as I hit play and wondered if this was going to imitate Le Cowboy, but it doesn’t. The base game here is relatively standard with 15 paylines on a 5 x 5 grid. Then the bonus game brings in Sticky Wilds and a mechanic where the total multiplier grows with each win by the amount of symbols in the win. It can get mighty high by the end of a round, and with the generous RTP, this is worth a few spins. The best of BGaming’s three new titles, for sure.

Rounding out this section, we have Godly Gains from Bullshark. It’s another tumbling cluster pays slot with a lot going on, so it’ll take you a while to wrap your head around the flow. To cut a long story short, things really heat up in the bonus round as we have two counters: a Global Multiplier and a Wild Symbol Counter, both of which get pumped up by the Thunderstrike Symbol. Then, that second counter dictates how many Wilds the God Mode symbol furnishes the grid with when it lands.

It feels a little convoluted at first, but there is the potential for big wins if the two meters build well, and the ‘Zeus in the gym’ theme will give you a chuckle or two.

Game of the Week

Army of Ares from Hacksaw can be thought of as a companion slot to Spear of Athena released last week by the same studio.

In Greek mythology, Athena and Ares are half-siblings, with the former representing the strategic nature of war, and the latter embodying the violent, bloody side of it. You can certainly feel that second atmosphere from the off once you load Army of Ares up; the soundtrack, the visuals, and even the mechanics of the game feel thrusting and brutal.

We’ve got 14 paylines on a 5 x 4 grid, and the focus of the base game comes down to Wild Wrath Reels. These are expanding wilds with multipliers attached (2x-300x), and crucially, when they land, they send 0-5 Wilds elsewhere on the grid, creating good chances for multiple winning lines. You can also turn on a FeatureSpins option to guarantee one Wild Wrath Reel every spin for 60x your wager.

Then there are the three levels of bonus round: Fear and Flame, Wrath and Ruin, and Ares Ascends. In Fear and Flame, the Wilds added by the Wild Wrath Reels can have multipliers themselves.

Wrath and Ruin is quite different. In this hold and win-style game, only blank symbols, various Disc Multipliers, and Battle Horses may land. The Disc Multipliers add values to the multiplier for that reel, while Battle Horses multiply the Reel Multiplier at the end of the feature. Everything is tallied up at the end to give you the final win for the round – it works a lot like Chaos Crew, if you’ve played that.

Finally the Ares Ascends feature can’t be bought into – it can only be accessed by landing 5 Scatters. It’s like Wrath and Ruin but you get big boosts from the start of the round.

Overall, Army of Ares feels straightforward and violent in a way other slots don’t. It’s not massively creative but it is vivid and engaging. The only qualm is how, once again, a Hacksaw game seems to be pushing you towards bonus buys to really have some fun. As long as you’re OK with that, this is a great new release.

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