Powered by SlotsReach.com
If you’ve played slots for more than five minutes in the last few years, you know Hacksaw Gaming’s famous VS symbols. Usually, they drop, they expand vertically, and they duel. But in Buried by Night, a highly volatile 5×4 slot with a 15,000x max win, the studio has literally flipped the script.
Here the VS symbols expand horizontally, and only when they complete a win, a rule Coffee Dealer used for its wild cups a few weeks earlier. It’s a fresh take on a familiar mechanic, but as I found out, this game is as ruthless as it is rewarding.
The Base Game: A Brutal Grind with Spikes of Brilliance
The base game paytable is incredibly top-heavy. The game runs on 14 fixed paylines at a 96.32% RTP, and the raw symbol values are, frankly, filler. Landing three-of-a-kind card suits pays a measly 0.10x your bet, and even the mid-tier skulls and hats require at least four-of-a-kind just to break even.
Because of this, the entire game revolves around the VS symbols, which land on reels 2, 3, and 4. When they hit, they expand horizontally to create a wild “DuelRow”, but only if the expansion completes a winning combo. Once it does, two multipliers (between 2x and 100x) appear and duel. The survivor applies to any win crossing that row.
One quirky detail I noticed: the highest multiplier doesn’t always win. Watching a 100x get shot down by a 2x is a tough pill to swallow, but the game doesn’t hide the coin-toss nature of the duel, which I can respect.
During my couple hundred test spins, the volatility really showed its teeth. I hit a dry spell of about 24 dead spins at one point. But when the game connects, it connects hard. My best base game hit came from a single VS on reel four. It expanded across reels three to five, a 4x multiplier won the duel, and three lines ran through it for a tidy 34x win. It single-handedly saved my session’s RTP.
The Bonus Features: Three Ways to Dig Your Grave (or Strike Gold)
Buried by Night offers three distinct bonus rounds. I managed to trigger the first one naturally, but the third proved to be a real unicorn.
Trigger Warning (3 Scatters)
This awards 10 free spins where the frequency of VS symbols is cranked up. I triggered this after about 130 base game spins. My first spin landed a VS with a 2x multiplier for a 6.6x win, which got my hopes up. Unfortunately, the rest of the feature was a graveyard of dead spins and fractional payouts, leaving me with a highly disappointing 13.9x total win.
Shoot To Kill (4 Scatters)
This is an 8-spin feature with a collection meter. Every scatter you land fills the bar. Reaching the first tier awards a “DuelSpin,” guaranteeing at least one VS symbol and three nudges. The nudge mechanic is brilliant here: after the board pays, the wild row nudges down one position and pays again. A single DuelRow can pay out four times as fresh symbols drop in. This is where the reliable potential seems to live.
Hot 100 Bonus (3 Special Scatters)
This can only be triggered from the base game, and it’s elusive. It awards a single free spin where the board keeps nudging and dropping until you hit exactly 100 wins. I chased this for a couple of hundred spins; I teased two of the special scatters a handful of times, but the third never dropped. It’s clearly the game’s super-bonus.
The 15,000x Dream Setup
One thing I always appreciate about Hacksaw is that they make the path to the max win easy to understand. To hit the 15,000x cap, you need four VS symbols, one on each row, all landing squarely on the 3rd reel.
Because a reel-3 VS expands across the whole row, four of them will turn the entire 5×4 grid completely wild. If the surviving multipliers from those four duels add up to at least 72x, every single one of the 14 paylines becomes a 5-of-a-kind win. It’s a transparent, exciting setup that gives you a very clear “dream spin” to chase.
If you are a fan of high-risk, high-reward slots and enjoy games like Duel at Dawn, this is an absolute must-play. Just make sure you bring a proper bankroll to survive the night.
