Games

Halloween is still 10 days away, but the casino lobby is already in costume. And not all of the costumes are pumpkins. Blask analysts looked at Halloween slots and the darker titles gaining ground beside them: vampires, witches, demons. The snapshot is from October 12. The festive catalog runs to 342 titles. The top spot in the season still goes to a vampire game: Le Vampire, a slot from Hacksaw Gaming. It shows up in 61 markets, ahead of every pumpkin-themed title. Le Vampire isn’t a one-off. Dark titles take 46% of the season’s lobby visibility, almost level with the festive share of 51%. The two studios split the season in very different ways. Pragmatic Play holds the largest share, 21%, and gets there with a whole stack of games. Five Big Bass Halloween titles sit in the top 30, one of them released under Reel Kingdom. Coven Rising and both Forever Split games add to the total. Hacksaw Gaming holds 15% with just three games: Le Vampire, Demonic Dolls and Epic SixSixSix. That works out to about 5% of the season per game, roughly double the per-title share of Pragmatic’s lineup. Operators reach for new releases, but they also reach for familiar games repainted for the season. 36 Coins Halloween Jackpots, 9 Coins Grand Diamond Edition Halloween Jackpots, Wild Hot 40 Halloween and Hot Slot 777 Coins Halloween Edition all take first position in a lobby tab somewhere. A Halloween coat on a game players already know may earn the same slot as a brand-new release. Greece has the highest festive visibility of any market, at 2.19. It also got there early: its season started on September 17, two and a half weeks ahead of last year’s October 4. The steepest rises against September are elsewhere. Timing differs just as much. Colombia, Italy and Denmark started pushing themed games in early September, while Bulgaria, Romania and Mexico waited until October, nearly a month later than last year.