House of Doom 2: The Crypt Slot Review
Hooded figures carved into stone pillars, iron chains slung across the top of the frame, and a dim orange glow rising from somewhere beneath the reels. This is House of Doom 2: The Crypt, Play’n GO‘s gothic-metal follow-up, and it’s a game that stakes nearly everything on a single reel position.
There’s no bonus wheel, no pick’em round, no second screen. Four wilds carry the whole design, and the bonus round recombines those same parts rather than adding new ones. It runs on a 5×3 grid with mid to high volatility and a 96.25% RTP, sitting alongside Lordi Reel Monsters and Dio – Killing the Dragon.
Spirit Gates and the Wilds
The base game has one moving part, and it’s a good one. A single Spirit Gate can appear on any reel, marking out one position. Land a wild inside it and that wild expands to fill the reel, then awards one re-spin with a bonus feature attached. Everything else orbits that one glowing square.
Only one gate is active at a time during normal play, which keeps the base game honest about its own tempo. A wild landing outside the gate does nothing beyond its usual substituting. The re-spin is where the movement happens, and the wild that triggers it decides what kind of movement that is.
The wild substitutes for all symbols except the scatter, and there are four of them. The first three each carry one special bonus, while the fourth combines all three at once and only appears in the bonus round. Each wild pays the same as the others, as multiples of the total bet:
- Three wilds pays 2x the total bet
- Four wilds pays 5x the total bet
- Five wilds pays 25x the total bet
The Three Attendant Wilds
Each of the first three wilds brings its own bonus when it lands in the gate, and each one changes the re-spin in a different way:
- Fire Mistress awards one of four multipliers: x2, x3, x5 or x10
- Metal Priestess converts all Ritual Relic symbols into Skull symbols
- Queen of the Damned adds a Spirit Gate to every reel
The Queen is the one that changes the shape of a spin. One gate is the norm, so her arrival turns a single glowing position into five, and every wild that lands after that gets its chance to expand. She has to land inside the gate herself for this to happen, which is a strict ask, but the payout is a reel set where any wild can become a full-reel expanded one.
Fire Mistress is the simplest of the three: a straight multiplier applied to the re-spin’s wins. Metal Priestess works as a symbol upgrade, thinning the reels of relics and stacking them with skulls instead.
Fire Mistress Multipliers
The multiplier wild is the most variable of the three. When Fire Mistress lands in the gate, the re-spin carries one of the following, chosen by the game:
- x2
- x3
- x5
- x10
The spread matters more than it looks. A x2 on a modest line is a shrug; a x10 on a full reel of expanded wilds is the kind of spin the base game is built to chase.
There’s no choosing which multiplier you get, and no climbing the range across a session. Every Fire Mistress landing is a coin toss between the floor and the top.
Metal Priestess and the Skull Upgrade
Metal Priestess converts every Ritual Relic symbol on the reels into the Skull symbol.
It’s the quietest of the three bonuses, and the only one that works on symbols already landed rather than on what’s about to land.
The Crypt Scatter
The scatter is The Crypt symbol, and only the upgraded versions count towards the bonus. Three upgraded scatters are the trigger, and plain scatters don’t open the round. It’s a stricter condition than the usual three-anywhere arrangement, and it’s the game’s way of making the round feel earned rather than simply frequent.
Crypt Spins
Three upgraded scatters award Crypt Spins, and the round works by combining the base game’s bonuses rather than introducing new ones. It takes the three wild bonuses and lets them stack together, and it adds a fourth wild to make the stacking explicit.
Spirit of Unity
The Spirit of Unity wild awards all three bonuses at the same time: the multiplier, the symbol upgrade and the additional Spirit Gates. It only exists during Crypt Spins, so the base game never shows it. Landing one means the multiplier applies while relics convert to skulls and gates spread across the reels, all inside a single re-spin.
It’s a tidy design. Everything Crypt Spins does is something the base game has already taught you, compressed into one wild instead of three. The round rewards knowing the attendant wilds, and the Spirit of Unity is the payoff for that knowledge.
How the Round Stacks
The order of operations is what gives the round its swing. The Queen’s gates go up first, so there are more positions for wilds to land in. A Spirit of Unity arriving in one of those gates then applies the multiplier and the skull conversion together, on a re-spin that already has five gates behind it.
The three bonuses were built to work alone in the base game; here they were built to work at once. In the base game you see one bonus attached to one expanded wild. In Crypt Spins the same bonuses arrive together, and the ceiling on any single re-spin rises accordingly.
That ceiling is the whole reason the round exists. No single attendant wild can produce a multiplied, upgraded, gate-covered reel on its own, because each one carries exactly one effect. The Spirit of Unity can, and it’s the only symbol in the game that can.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.2/10
Most of your time in the crypt is spent waiting for one square to light up. That’s the honest shape of it: a single gate, a lot of quiet spins, then a wild lands where it matters and the whole frame jolts awake. Anyone choosing this over the studio’s busier titles is choosing that build-and-release rhythm, chains and all.
The strength is Crypt Spins. Because it stacks everything the base game has already taught you into one wild, the round pays off understanding rather than blind luck. The weakness is everything either side of it: between gates the base game is thin, and with only upgraded scatters counting towards the trigger, the wait for the round can stretch.
It suits gothic-metal fans and players who enjoy one interlocking system rather than five separate ones. Anyone after constant feature noise will find the crypt too quiet for them. The fire at the bottom of the frame, though, stays lit throughout.
House of Doom 2: The Crypt FAQs
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What is the RTP of House of Doom 2: The Crypt?
The RTP is 96.25%. -
Is House of Doom 2: The Crypt high volatility?
It’s rated mid to high volatility, so wins can be sizeable but won’t arrive constantly. -
What is the grid size of House of Doom 2: The Crypt?
The game plays on a 5×3 grid of five reels and three rows. -
When is House of Doom 2: The Crypt released?
House of Doom 2: The Crypt’s release date is 11 March 2021. -
Who makes House of Doom 2: The Crypt?
Play’n GO developed and published the game. -
How do you trigger Crypt Spins in House of Doom 2: The Crypt?
Three upgraded scatter symbols trigger Crypt Spins. Plain scatters don’t count; only the upgraded versions open the round. -
What does the Spirit Gate do in House of Doom 2: The Crypt?
During the base game, one Spirit Gate can mark a position on any reel. If a wild lands there it expands to occupy the full reel, and you get a re-spin carrying that wild’s bonus feature. -
What is the Spirit of Unity wild in House of Doom 2: The Crypt?
The Spirit of Unity awards all three wild bonuses at once: the Fire Mistress multiplier, the Metal Priestess symbol upgrade and the Queen of the Damned’s additional Spirit Gates. It only appears during Crypt Spins.
