Buried by Night Demo & review

Buried by Night turns Hacksaw's VS symbol on its side: instead of a wild reel it makes a wild row, and two duelists fight over the multiplier that row carries. Hacksaw Gaming releases it in November 2026, and we tested the pre-release demo. It suits bonus buyers who like one symbol to decide a spin, and offers little to anyone who wants steady line wins.

How Buried by Night works

Fourteen fixed lines pay three or more of a kind from the leftmost reel on a 5x4 grid. The paytable is short and flat: the sheriff star tops the regular symbols, and only a Wild or a VS symbol pays more for five.

How the features connect:

1. A VS symbol on reels 2, 3 or 4 expands into a Wild DuelRow when that makes a win, and a duel sets the row's multiplier.
2. Three FS scatters start Trigger Warning, which brings more VS symbols. Four start Shoot to Kill, whose bar earns DuelSpins with guaranteed VS symbols and Nudges.
3. Three Hot 100 scatters start Six Feet Under, one spin of Nudges that runs until 100 wins are counted.
4. Two bonus buys and two FeatureSpins modes skip the wait or change every spin.

DuelRows carry the game. Every bonus is a different way of getting more of them.

How DuelRows work

A VS symbol can appear on reels 2, 3 and 4, never on the outer reels, and it expands along its row only if the expanded row would be part of a win. Where it lands sets the width: from reel 2 it covers reels 1 to 3, from reel 3 the whole row, and from reel 4 reels 3 to 5. The expanded row is wild, and DuelRows never overlap.

Each DuelRow then holds a duel between two duelists, each showing a multiplier of up to 100x. The survivor's multiplier applies to every win connected to that row. When one win touches several DuelRows, their multipliers are added together before they apply.

On base spin 24 a VS on reel 2 became a DuelRow across the top of the first three reels. The duel set 2x against 5x, and the higher one survived. The wins connected to the row came to $23.00.

Base spin 24 at $1, settled: a 5x DuelRow across the top of reels 1 to 3, WIN $23.00. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

How the bonuses trigger

The FS scatter decides which of the two main bonuses you get, by how many land at once. The third bonus has its own scatter.

Trigger Warning

Three FS scatters award 10 free spins with a higher chance of VS symbols. Two more scatters during the round add 2 spins, and three add 4. Nothing else changes, so in practice it is the base game with DuelRows arriving more often, and every one of them can still meet another on a shared win.

Shoot to Kill

Four FS scatters award 8 free spins and a DuelSpin Bar above the reels. Each FS symbol that lands fills one step, and every three steps complete a tier. A tier awards a DuelSpin: at least one VS symbol and 3 Nudges at tier 1, rising to at least four VS symbols and 6 Nudges at tier 4, plus 2 more free spins each time. A Nudge moves every reel down one row, and wins pay between Nudges. DuelSpins do not use up free spins. The catch is that the bar only moves when scatters land inside the round.

Shoot to Kill from our buy: the DuelSpin Bar above the reels, rewards from 1+ VS to 4+ VS, with one step filled. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

Six Feet Under, the Hot 100 Bonus

Three Hot 100 scatters in the base game give a single free spin in which Nudges keep coming until the Hot 100 Meter has counted 100 wins. FS and Hot 100 symbols never share the grid, and this round is not on the buy menu.

Bonus buy and FeatureSpins: prices and what you get

All four cards carry a Very high volatility label. Two are bonus buys that start a round at once. Two are FeatureSpins modes that charge on every spin until you switch them off: BonusHunt makes each spin three times as likely to trigger a bonus game, and Fast Hands guarantees at least one VS symbol on every spin, though FS and Hot 100 symbols cannot land while it runs.

Shoot to Kill costs two and a half times as much as Trigger Warning and gives fewer free spins. What the extra money buys is the DuelSpin Bar, and the bar still needs scatters to move.

The buy menu at $1: two FeatureSpins modes at $2.00 and $60.00 a spin, and the Trigger Warning and Shoot to Kill buys at $80.00 and $200.00. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

RTP, volatility and max win

The rules give 96.32% for the base game, and the four cards sit within about a tenth of a point of it. Hacksaw lists three lower versions as well, down to about 86%, and the casino chooses which one runs. Hacksaw rates the game 4 out of 5 for volatility, below the Very high on every buy card. The max win is 15,000x the bet in every mode.

Our Buried by Night demo test

DuelRows made the base game, and nothing else did. Thirty-one base spins paid, yet only two passed a couple of dollars, spins 24 and 37, and both were DuelRow wins. No bonus triggered inside the counted spins.

The two buys behaved as opposites. Trigger Warning returned well over five times its price, almost all of it from free spin 8, when three DuelRows landed together, added their multipliers on shared wins and paid $377.00. Shoot to Kill paid less than a dollar: its bar never reached the first tier, so no DuelSpin came. Fast Hands landed a VS on every spin and still returned about half its cost.

Six Feet Under, the DuelSpins and the bigger duel multipliers stayed out of reach, so those parts come from the rules. One round per buy and ten spins per mode are far too few to rank the options by return.

Trigger Warning free spin 8 from our $80 buy: three DuelRows on one spin, EPIC WIN 377.00. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

Our $80 Trigger Warning buy at a $1 bet: TOTAL WIN 439.80 after 10 free spins. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

Is Buried by Night worth playing?

Not for the base game, but yes for the bonuses, with Trigger Warning first. By the rules it is the safer of the two buys: it adds VS symbols to all ten spins, while Shoot to Kill's extra value waits on scatters landing during the round. The base game is mostly card-suit wins between DuelRows, so spinning it means waiting on one symbol.

Wanted Dead or a Wild and Duel at Dawn use the same duel on whole reels. Pick Wanted Dead or a Wild for wild reels and three buyable bonuses, or Duel at Dawn for multipliers up to 200x and an Outlaw who shoots wilds. Pick Buried by Night if you want the duel on rows and a third bonus that runs on Nudges.

In the demo, run ten Fast Hands spins first. A VS lands on every one, so it is the quickest way to see how a DuelRow's width depends on its reel and how the duel sets the multiplier.