Spring Heeled Jack

Spring Heeled Jack: Slot Overview

For all its faults, the internet has certainly got its merits as well. If not for the internet, it's unlikely we would have been able to decipher the title of Spring Heeled Jack, an online slot from software provider Blue Guru Games. As it is, a quick interwebs search returned more than 360,000 results, though the first one on the page was enough to set the record straight. Spring Heeled Jack is a character from Victorian-era English folklore, claimed to have been first seen in London in 1837, then later in other parts of the UK. Spring-Heeled Jack was apparently able to make large jumps and had a terrifying appearance, with eyes that flamed red like fire. Eyewitness accounts are rather sinister, too, and the whole tale is worth reading up on if you're interested in boogeymen figures of the past.

Or the present, since Spring-Heeled Jack has wormed his way into an online slot that bears his name. Spring-Heeled Jack is set on the cobbled streets of Victorian London, its 5-reel, 3-row grid wedged between buildings of the era and beneath a grim grey sky, where smoke belches upwards from numerous chimney stacks. The streets are conspicuously empty as if Spring-Heeled Jack has scared everyone home, latching their doors to keep the bad man out. Or, perhaps, he's prowling about for the next victim to jump scare. Hard to say, but the scene is very Victorian, and the jaunty soundtrack gives the game a jolly Sherlock Holmes feel.

Spring-Heeled Jack has been made to play on all devices and provides players with bet levels of 20 p/c to $/€40 per spin. It's highly volatile, Blue Guru Games rating this part of the puzzle as 5 out of 5, and carries a default RTP value of 96.01%. With a frequency of 22.98%, wins occur when identical symbols land on consecutive reels from the first reel onwards, meaning players get 243 ways to win.

Maintenance hole cover 9-A royals are used as the low pays, and four characters as the highs – a gasping lady, a detective type, a police officer, and Spring-Heeled Jack as the top paying tile. Land a five-of-a-kind winning way awards 0.3-0.6x the bet for the royals or 1-2x the bet for the high pays. One last point before careening into the features, Spring-Heeled Jack does not dole wild symbols at any time.

Spring Heeled Jack: Slot Features

Instead, it utilises mystery symbols which appear on reels 2, 3, or 4. Mystery symbols always appear fully stacked, and when they hit, they transform to reveal the same symbols as those on the reel to the left of them, including scatters. Essentially, they sync reels.

Win Multiplier

In the base game, pay symbols can land with multipliers of x2, x3, or x5 on top of them. Multipliers are applied to any wins they are a part of, and when more than one is part of a win, the values are multiplied together.

Jumping Jack Free Games

Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols awards 10, 12, or 15 free spins, respectively. Free spins can also land up to 3 mystery symbol stacks on reels 2, 3, or 4, as in the base game. One difference, however, is that multipliers appear on symbols with values of x2, x3, x5, or x10, plus they appear more frequently and with greater values. When more than one multiplier is used in a win, Jack leaps from multiplier to multiplier, tallying their values before being applied. Free games can be retriggered while the bonus round is active.

Finally, where available, players can buy the free spins round for the cost of 50x the bet. When buying free spins, the RTP drops a bit to 95.95%.

Spring Heeled Jack: Slot Verdict

You have to hand it to Blue Guru Games. The self-styled storytellers have dug deep into British lore and come up with a character you just don't hear about much these days, if at all. Whatever else we say here, let's tip our hat to the team for shrugging off conventionality and picking a non-cliche character to star in a game, though the non-Jack characters are a tad generic. There is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario happening here. Did Blue Guru Games come up with the leaping concept and track down the Spring Heeled Jack character, or did it stumble upon Spring Heeled Jack first while doing some research which led to the leaping idea? An enigma that is as mysterious as the game it arose in.

Another enigma, to a lesser extent, is the multiplier system used in the game. Sometimes overuse can lead to dilution, and there are moments when the multipliers in Spring-Heeled Jack threaten to do so. They land with such abundance at times, their significance can fade, especially when a bunch of them combine to create a disappointing win, in part because symbol values are relatively low. It was peculiar hitting a five-symbol win with an x90 multiplier and pocketing 27x the bet. Their results can be quite impressive, though, and winning potential is too, as the max recorded win in a billion simulated spins was 15,587x the bet.

To sum up, Spring Heeled Jack has its pros and cons, learning closer to the former than the latter. It's got the trademarked Blue Guru Games storytelling aspect due to the unearthing of a not exactly well-known figure these days and slotting him into a game with an unusual multiplier meets mystery symbols system. It won't excite everyone, but players on the hunt for a game with an obscure character, and a multiplicative side, might find their needs met in Spring Heeled Jack.