House of Fun Slot Machine

Overview

This game opens with two teenagers named Paul and Jane driving down a dark, scary road when their car dies. They then ask a nearby caretaker for help, and he points them to the House of Fun while issuing a warning about the place.

After opening the door, the teens are introduced to three strange characters, including a demonic jack in the box, a man who eats a raw fish, and a kooky mad hatter lookalike.

The actual game takes place outside the House of Fun, with the teens and their dog, Chip, standing off to the side. The sides of the reels are decorated with dog like gargoyle statues while you can see the ominous House of Fun in the background.

Symbols in this game include the following:

The green suited man and short blonde haired man are the highest paying symbols, offering 150 coins each if they appear five times in a pay line.

You'll see these symbols perform a number of animations, including the mad hatter spinning around and giggling, the overweight man eating fish and tossing bones, Paul using the doorknocker, a Cheshire cat smiling widely, the creepy blonde haired man beckoning the teens towards him, the candles blowing out on their own and the caretaker shoveling dirt.

Visually, we'd say that this 3D slot ranks somewhere in between Betsoft's older games and their latest releases. The graphics aren't as clean as some of Betsoft's top slots, but they're adequate enough to create the intended spooky setting.

The music seems somewhere in between a haunted house and funhouse while a couple of the characters have signature sayings when appearing in winning pay lines.

This game doesn't have any wild or scatter symbols, which is a bit weird for a 3D slot. But it does have plenty of bonuses, which we'll cover a little later.

Betting Options

You can change pay lines from 1 30, coin size from $0.02 to $1.00, and coins per pay line from 1 5.

Other options include automatically spinning the reels between 5 and 100 spins, and the ability to shut off the music / sound effects. But given that the music helps set the atmosphere, we feel that shutting the music off would take a lot of fun out of the game.

One thing we don't like about the betting options is how some of them are hard to see. The spin, bet per line and pay line selector are etched into stone at the bottom of the reels, while the coin size button is written on a sign off to the left.

You can see them all if you look hard enough, but it's kind of annoying in the beginning.

House of Fun Bonus

As with many Betsoft games, House of Fun comes loaded with three different bonus features:

The Click Me bonus round is triggered when 3 or more purple mad hatter symbols appear on reels 1, 2 and 3, causing the mad hatter step off the reels and into the foreground. Behind him, three purple symbols flash and he showcases each prize you select.

The round continues going until you pick the Collect symbol. We played this round twice and got 210 credits the first time and another 180 credits the second time.

The Escape Bonus game is triggered by 3 or more doorknockers anywhere on the reels, and this takes you into a large room with five doors. Your mission in the Escape Bonus is to help Paul, Jane and Chip escape the House of Fun.

But rather than helping them escape, it's actually to your advantage to keep choosing the wrong door, which sends the demonic jack in the box lunging at them. Every time this happens, you pick up credits and get to select another door.

The first time playing, we chose the wrong door three times and racked up 390 credits before finally picking the right door that got the trio out safely. The second time, we immediately picked the right door and only earned 90 credits, which definitely seems backwards.

Free spins are triggered by getting 3 or more demonic jack in the boxes anywhere on the reels, which we found rather hard to do. Once you finally get the free spins, the demon fills the center reel to create wilds and help you earn extra payouts.

Comparison to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

House of Fun is easily the scariest slot among Betsoft's titles. The next scariest game is probably Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, so we thought that it'd be worth comparing the two games.

Jekyll and Hyde is more centered on the doctor's self-alchemy experiments, but it includes some chills during Mr. Hyde's bonus as he terrorizes the streets of London.

The first thing you'll notice when playing this game is that its graphics are definitely better than what House of Fun offers. So from a pure visual perspective, you're going to like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The bonus features department is a draw because, just like House of Fun, Jekyll and Hyde also offers plenty of extras. Our favorite is the Frenzy Bonus, where you lead Mr. Hyde on a rampage as he loots stores and assaults people.

The Potion Bonus sees you try to help Dr. Jekyll made an Anti-Monster Serum in as few tries as possible so that you earn more credits. You can also earn free spins by filling a red potion meter at the bottom of the reels.

As you can see, the bonuses in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde match up pretty well with the bonus rounds in House of Fun.

Conclusion

The theme in House of Fun seems stereotypical since it involves some teenagers' car breaking down outside a spooky old house. But in the context of a slots game, House of Fun's storyline is pretty entertaining.

It doesn't hurt that Betsoft did a good job of creating some creepy characters and offering enough bonus rounds to appease experienced slots players.

The main knocks against this game, though, is that its 3D graphics don't quite measure up to newer games, and a few of the betting options are hard to see in the beginning.

We think that you'll be able to look beyond these inconveniences to what's an otherwise well done slot.