Hellcatraz review
Hellcatraz by Relax Gaming came out on 5 May 2020. The sequel, Hellcatraz 2 Dream Drop, came out on 27 April 2023 with a 10,000x cap. The original is built on a 6×6 grid: timers tick over mystery symbols and a key counter fills in the corner of the screen, and when it reaches 2,000 keys, super free spins begin. The timers are dealt in one of two modes of your choice, Lockdown or Mixed.
Pixel prison and timers over the mysteries
The name blends “Alcatraz” and “Hell”. By the descriptions in catalogues, the game is styled like old computer adventures with pixels and eight-bit graphics, not like a gloomy underworld. The studio’s own page says that mystery lurks between the bars, and every mystery symbol is shown as a countdown. This way the game turns ordinary cascades into anticipation: you see how many drops remain before a reveal, and that gives each spin a tense rhythm.
46,656 ways and a wild from reel two
There are 46,656 ways to win, which is 6 to the sixth power. A combination is matching symbols in any positions on three or more adjacent reels, starting from the leftmost. Of all the combinations of one symbol, only the longest is paid, and several identical symbols on one reel multiply the paths: two fitting symbols on the first reel, three on the second and one on the third give 2 x 3 x 1 = 6 paths, each paying as a three-symbol combination. If the same symbol also sits on the fourth reel, the payout is recalculated for four reels and the three-reel combination no longer counts.
Each extra reel multiplies the paths by the number of positions: if one symbol filled the whole screen, a three-reel combination would give 216 paths, four reels 1,296, five 7,776 and six 46,656. In practice a symbol never fills the entire screen, but the ceiling of the game rests on long combinations. The wild appears on reels 2 to 6 and replaces ordinary symbols; under the official rules it is absent from the first reel, so a combination cannot begin with a wild. Pay values of the ordinary symbols are not disclosed in the rules.
How a mystery timer ticks
In every spin the grid holds mystery symbols with timers. A timer falls by one with each cascade, not with each spin; as soon as it reaches zero, all affected symbols reveal and turn into the same symbol. The values on the symbols vary, but the principle is the same: the longer the chain of wins, the closer the reveal. If no cascades occur, the timer stays and the mystery remains closed, and the timer lives within a single spin and resets with it. Mystery symbols take part in both the base game and free spins, but the super free spins have no timers.
Lockdown or Mixed: how the modes differ
The mode is chosen before play with a switch on the game screen. The feature set and key collection are the same in both modes; the difference lies only in how the timers are dealt.
| Mode | How timers are set | RTP |
|---|---|---|
| Lockdown | All mystery symbols share one timer | 96.46% |
| Mixed | Two independent values, each symbol receives either with a 50% chance | 96.30% |
In Lockdown all mystery symbols reveal together. In Mixed the timers of two groups may differ, so symbols reveal at different moments; if the two values coincide, Mixed behaves like Lockdown. The return in Lockdown is higher by 0.16 points, and third-party catalogues sometimes swap the modes’ RTP figures, so the version is best checked against the rules inside the game. The official page does not name a volatility. The switch labels one mode High Volatile and the other Super High Volatile, but the rules do not say which label goes with which.
Keys: from one to ten per symbol
In the base game keys appear at random on top of ordinary symbols. Each key symbol brings 1 to 10 keys, after which an ordinary symbol sits beneath. The frequency of keys and the distribution of values from 1 to 10 are not published by the studio. Keys build up between spins and are counted together, whatever stake they landed at. When the counter reaches 2,000, super free spins start and collection begins again; if more keys were gathered, the surplus is saved and fills the next counter.
Super free spins: five spins without timers
Super free spins always start with five spins. Mystery symbols here do not count cascades but reveal the moment they land: the mystery stops being a promise and becomes an immediate event, so the short bonus is denser than ordinary spins. The bonus also adds a golden mystery symbol. It needs two cascades to bring one additional spin and turn into a random symbol, so its mere appearance is not enough and extra spins call for chains.
At what stake the super free spins are played
The stake of the bonus is not the current one. The game remembers the stake at which each key was collected and computes a weighted average, weighted by the number of keys. A thousand keys at 1 and a thousand at 5 give a bonus at 3, while 1,500 keys at 0.10 and 500 at 0.50 give 0.20. The result is then rounded to a whole number of minimum stakes by stochastic rounding: in the example from the rules, an average of 1.2 minimum stakes becomes 2 with a 20% chance and 1 otherwise.
A big stake at the end of collection will not save the bonus if most keys came at a small one: what carries weight is keys, not minutes of play. The reverse holds too, as a few keys collected at a big stake lift the average only a little, so for a big bonus the stake must stay high through the entire stash.
Bonus buy: full price and key top-up
Hellcatraz is one of the bonus buy slots, with two purchase options, both picked from a button next to the key counter and available only in the base game. The full buy opens super free spins directly and leaves the accumulated keys untouched. Its price is 200 bets according to three catalogues, while the official rules keep it as a variable. The top-up pays only for the missing keys at 0.1 of a bet each, the game recalculates its price by itself, and after a top-up the collection resets. With an empty counter the top-up costs the same 200 bets, which supports the catalogue price; with half the keys gathered it costs half as much, but what was gathered goes into it.
The buy RTP per the official rules is 96.83%, slightly above both modes. What matters more is that over 200 bets of ordinary play the super free spins may never start, while the buy guarantees entry, whereas in ordinary play keys pile up by themselves.
The 51,843x cap beside other Relax games
The client configuration names the maximum win as 51,843 bets and puts the chance of reaching it at one in 14,684,122. The studio’s launch press release mentioned 46,656, the number of ways; the configuration value is the more recent. Hit rate and super free spins frequency are not named by the studio, and catalogues give conflicting numbers, including for the two modes.
Hellcatraz — Released: 2020; RTP: 96.46% / 96.30%; Volatility: very high; Cap: 51,843x.
Temple Tumble Megaways — Released: 2019; RTP: 96.25%; Volatility: high; Cap: 7,767x.
Iron Bank — Released: 2020; RTP: 96.20%; Volatility: very high; Cap: 49,999x.
Cascades and timers will feel familiar to fans of Temple Tumble Megaways, but there the chain works differently and the number of ways changes from spin to spin. Cascades with a counter that blows up neighbouring cells at zero also drive Volatile Vikings from 2021. Among the studio’s games with a similar ceiling, Iron Bank stands out, and the developer’s other slots are collected on the Relax Gaming page.
