Though not quite like Sherlock Holmes, Victorian Villain has a lot of things that are similar, being themed around the same murder mystery topic. Offered by Microgaming, it manages to give you a couple of great features and a design which looks Victorian at least in part, though it’s not as great as some of its Sherlock Holmes themed competitors.
243 ways to win are present on the 5 reels of Victorian Villain. The slot’s features bring you a bonus game, a round of free spins with multipliers, scatters and wilds. The prizes aren’t as great, only going up to $2,500.
Features of Victorian Villain
The game has both pros and cons. The ways to win, the two scatter symbols, the free spins with multipliers and the bonus game would be on the pro side. The only disappointment is the very limited wild, which can appear on three reels out of five.
In a game which has ways to win, you still need symbols to appear from the leftmost reel and going to the right, on consecutive reels, but you no longer need them to be in fixed positions. They can be anywhere on that reel, and they will still be part of a combo. A total of 243 ways to win are offered in Victorian Villain.
The wild symbol is the most limited feature of the game, though all the others are pretty great. The Victorian Villain Logo gets this role and it acts as the wild from the middle three reels, which means the 2nd, 3rd and 4th one. It does not substitute for the two scatters and it doesn’t have its own prizes to give away.
Free Games Feature
If you see the Bonus Skull appear on the game’s first three reels, you’re in luck, as this will trigger a feature where you get to choose how many spins you want, and with which multipliers.
You choose one of the three alleys on the new screen, and you receive 5 spins with 10x multipliers, 10 spins with 5x multipliers, or 16 spins with 3x multipliers. The choice is left up to you. You can retrigger the feature, if you’re lucky again and get the three scatters.
Search for Clues Bonus Game
The other scatter symbol of the game is the one with the “Search for Clues” logo. It is used on the reels 3, 4 and 5. You need it present on all three reels, in the same round, to get access to the bonus game. It will also give you a prize worth 50x the bet at that point.
It’s a simple feature, showing you a room with various objects in it, which you have to click on to get the clues and the prizes they have to offer. If you get the Collect message, the feature ends.
Betting options and jackpots
You wager on 25 lines in order to cover 243 ways to win, which seems like a pretty good deal, but the prizes are somewhat lower than usual. You use wagers of $0.01 to $2.50 on each line, with the maximum wager being $62.50. The line bet uses 1 to 5 coins, with denominations of up to $0.50.
As for the game’s top rewards, these will give you 1,000x the line bet, or 5,000 coins. Their maximum value would be $2,500.
Design and symbols
The Victorian theme that they’ve tried to offer here is mostly visible in some of the symbols, which basically means in the way the people are dressed. You don’t get to see the streets of 19th century London, but you have villains, detectives, ladies and policemen among the symbols. It’s not an impressive game unfortunately, even though the characters look pretty good.
Symbols: Game Logo (wild), Bonus Skull (scatter, 50x the bet), Search for Clues Logo (scatter, 50x the bet), Victorian Villain (1,000x), Lady Detective (1,000x), Victorian Lady (1,000x), Policeman (500x), Ace (250x), King (150x), Queen (150x), Jack (150x), Ten (100x) and Nine (100x).
Is It Worth Playing?
It’s a rather dark design, but it has the bonus game with the clues to the murder mystery, which is a must in a game like this. The presence of the ways to win is another plus in its favor, and I’m not sure if other mystery themed slots offer them. It might be worth some of your time.
You will find Victorian Villain at any online casino which chooses to use software from Microgaming, playable either for free or for real money.
