18+ Only. Play Responsibly.
The bear was allowed on reels one, three and five.
The Viking got reels two and four.
This seemed sensible.
If Battle The Beast had put them beside each other from the beginning, the longhouse would probably have needed another wall before I had even chosen a stake.
I started with €240.
€1.25 per spin.
Twenty-five fixed lines crossed five reels and three rows inside a dark wooden hall full of axes, shields, barrels, longships and enough firelight to make every object look as though it had recently survived an argument.
The bear was the Wild.
A huge one.
The kind of bear that had clearly stopped accepting berries as a serious meal several winters ago.
The Viking was the Scatter.
Large axe.
Large beard.
Absolutely no indication that he considered fighting a bear to be an unusual part of the evening.
There were barrels among the paying symbols.
Longships.
Shields.
Axes.
The barrels interested me because they were standing in the same building where a Viking and a bear were being deliberately positioned on alternate reels.
Their future seemed poor.
I left Super Bet off.
At €1.25, the normal arrangement already looked adequately violent.
The first spins were mostly restrained.
An axe line returned €1.50.
A few Ks connected.
Three shields produced something small.
A longship managed €2.50 and then disappeared as though it had remembered there was open water somewhere outside.
The important part was what almost happened.
Bear on reel one.
Viking on reel four.
Too far apart.
Bear on reel three.
No Viking.
Viking on reel two.
Bear on reel five.
Again, nothing.
They kept arriving in the same three-row window without actually standing on adjacent reels.
It became difficult not to watch the positions.
The ordinary symbols could have arranged themselves however they liked.
I wanted the bear next to the man with the axe.
That was apparently what my slot session had become.
Axe.
Barrel.
Shield.
K.
Viking.
Where was the bear?
Next spin.
Bear.
Longship.
A.
Barrel.
No Viking.
The game had created two creatures whose entire purpose was to fight and then spent several minutes making them miss each other like opposing raiding parties using different fjords.
After twenty paid spins, €25 had gone out.
€8.75 had come back.
Balance:
€223.75.
No duel.
No Free Games.
No jackpot.
The barrels remained intact.
That was probably the greatest surprise.
I paid spin twenty-one.
€1.25.
The reels stopped.
Bear on reel three.
Viking on reel four.
Adjacent.
Finally.
Both symbols expanded.
The bear filled the entire third reel.
The Viking filled the entire fourth.
The rest of the symbols stayed where they were, suddenly looking extremely unimportant.
An axe on reel one.
A barrel on reel five.
Some letters in between.
None of them appeared equipped to influence the next few seconds.
The bear roared.
The Viking raised his axe.
They went at each other.
The Viking won.
The bear disappeared.
Then reel three filled with Vikings too.
I was looking at six Scatters.
Two complete reels of the same enormous axe-carrying man.
The Viking had defeated one bear and responded by becoming six Vikings.
That was a tremendous use of victory.
Duel Respin.
The two full Viking reels stayed locked.
Reels one, two and five spun again.
The respin had one job.
Find more Viking.
Reel one stopped.
Nothing.
Reel five slowed.
Shield.
Then reel two landed the Scatter.
The Viking expanded instantly.
Full reel.
Three more.
Six became nine.
The longhouse now contained nine identical Vikings and no visible evidence that anyone had ordered reinforcements.
Nine Scatters.
Nine Free Games.
Balance outside the feature:
€222.50.
The screen changed.
One reel became entirely bear.
Reel three.
Three bears stacked vertically.
The Viking had won the base-game fight so decisively that the prize was apparently to begin the feature surrounded by more bear.
I had stopped trying to identify the tactical philosophy.
First Free Game.
The bear reel stood in the centre.
An axe line crossed it.
A shield joined.
€3.75.
Nothing spectacular.
But the bear remained.
Second Free Game brought the Viking onto an adjacent reel.
The symbols expanded.
Another duel.
The same Viking.
The same bear.
The barrels were still somewhere nearby pretending this was standard tavern behaviour.
This time the bear won.
The Viking vanished.
The global multiplier moved from x1 to x2.
That was it.
No chest opened.
No meter climbed.
The bear had hit a Viking hard enough to improve mathematics.
The resulting lines paid €7.50.
I was now supporting the bear.
Not for ethical reasons.
The bear made the number bigger.
Several ordinary symbols followed.
Axes.
A longship.
One barrel.
The Wild reel remained the central fact of the feature.
Everything else was scenery around three vertically stacked bears.
Then another Viking arrived.
Adjacent.
Expansion.
Fight.
The Viking won.
The bear reel was defeated.
A Scatter Prize appeared.
Six times the €1.25 stake.
€7.50.
But the global multiplier was x2.
€15.
On the following spin, the full bear reel had moved.
The Viking had won a duel and the official consequence was relocating an entire column of bear elsewhere in the building.
Nobody touched the barrel.
I began to suspect the barrel was the smartest character in Battle The Beast.
Stay round.
Stay wooden.
Do not make eye contact.
A cluster of ordinary wins through the new Wild reel added €6.25.
Then the bear met another Viking.
They expanded.
The axe came up.
The bear won again.
x3.
The feature now had three times sitting over everything.
The next set of paylines went through the full Wild reel.
Axes connected.
A longship joined another line.
€15.
The ship had finally discovered the secret to profitable navigation.
Sail directly through a bear.
The feature moved toward its final few spins with the global multiplier still at x3.
No reset between rounds.
No gradual erosion.
The bear had earned the number by repeatedly fighting Vikings and the number stayed.
Another Viking appeared beside the Wild reel.
This was becoming less like a random event and more like somebody kept opening the same longhouse door without checking whether the bear was still inside.
Expansion.
Duel.
The Viking won.
The 6x Scatter Prize returned.
Base value:
€7.50.
Current multiplier:
x3.
€22.50.
The Wild reel shifted again for the final part of the feature.
The Viking had now won twice.
The bear had won twice.
The Viking victories paid direct prizes.
The bear victories improved every subsequent calculation.
This was an unusually productive disagreement.
I had one Free Game left.
The full bear reel was now on the fourth position.
The reels spun around it.
Axe.
Shield.
Longship.
Bear.
Axe.
The symbols stopped.
The bear connected across more than one line.
The x3 multiplier remained.
€12.50.
Feature total:
€82.50.
Balance:
€305.
I had started with €240.
Profit:
€65.
The feature ended.
The multiplier reset.
The normal reels returned.
I did not press spin.
There was no need to send the longhouse back into another argument after that.
The final feature screen still sat in my head more clearly than the money.
One complete reel of bear.
Three of them stacked from floor to ceiling.
Axes around it.
A longship nearby.
Barrels somehow surviving the whole evening.
The Viking had entered as one man, expanded into three, won a fight, turned into six, summoned a respin, helped produce nine of himself and then spent the Free Games repeatedly challenging a bear that became more financially dangerous every time it won.
Battle The Beast had begun by keeping the two of them on separate reels.
By the end, that looked less like a mechanic.
It looked like excellent advice.
Dice Bonanza has more red flags than a bonus buy menu.