The Bargain Biters Strike in the Black Friday Slot

Shady Lady continues its streak of controversially funny games with the Black Friday slot. This time around, the focus is on the utter chaos the holiday brings out, with people brawling in the streets for their shot at a considerable discount. The game takes it up to 11, turning shoppers into a zombie horde. Car crashes and bickering among shoppers will keep you safe for a while, but once the store opens, your odds of surviving turn slim.

The theme is striking, but is the rest of the game good enough to match it? Find out in our in-depth review of Shady Lady’s Black Friday slot.

Black Friday Visuals

One glance at the slot will make it obvious it draws inspiration from zombie movies. Cars have screeched to a halt all around the store, and some have crashed into each other. What little free space isn’t taken up by massive pick-up trucks and jeeps is filled with shopping carts. Iron gates have been put up to funnel the shoppers, though judging by the tracks in the snow, more than one person decided to drive up to the store doors. Hats off to the art team for nailing the vibe.

Lower-value symbols in this game include toilet paper, snacks, shotgun shells, and massagers. Meanwhile, higher-paying icons are the most stereotypical renditions of Americans you’ll see on the internet – old, fat, ungroomed, and riding around on mobility scooters. A blood smear serves as the game’s Wild, while the Black Friday logo is the Scatter. You’ll also see a gallery of familiar faces playing the role of Cop, Protestor, and Politician bonus symbols.

Black Friday Gameplay and Features

Shady Lady’s slot is played on a 5×4 grid with 30 fixed paylines. You need at least three matching symbols to win a cash prize. All winning combinations must follow an active payline and start with the leftmost reel.

Road Rage Re-spins

When a Cop, Protestor, or Politician lands on the reels, the Road Rage Re-spins activate. Each character gets run over by a different car, each playing out differently.

• The Cop gets run over by a Prius, creating a two-high Wild with no multiplier.
• The Protestor gets run over by a Pick-Up, resulting in a three-high Wild with a random fixed multiplier.
• The Politician gets run over by a Techno Truck, creating a four-high Wild with a progressive multiplier that increases every time the car moves.

Each spin, the car moves down by one position, leaving behind a Wild blood trail. The feature continues until no more cars are on the reels. That said, it is possible to have multiple vehicles present on the grid simultaneously.

Parking Lot Stampede

There is a random chance, every round, that the Parking Lot Stampede occurs. It removes all low-value symbols from the grid, allowing higher-paying and bonus icons to fill the empty spots. If you’re super lucky, the Parking Lot Stampede and Road Rage Re-spins will trigger on the same spin.

Bonus and Super Bonus

Land three Scatters to activate the Bonus feature. The store starts to fill with shoppers, and each new wave pushes the existing symbols further down. Each character appears with a fixed cash prize, which you get if you remove the icon from the reels.

The way you’re supposed to do that becomes obvious when the screens behind the counter light up. The first two can show error messages or boosters, while the latter can raise cash prizes or weapon multipliers. The third screen can display an error or reveal one of four weapons.

• Pistol eliminates a random bottom-most character on the grid
• Machine Gun removes the bottom-most character from every reel
• Laser kills all characters on one random reel
• Nuke annihilates all characters in the playing area

Before each spin, there’s a chance for adjacent shoppers to start a brawl. They’ll fight until only one remains, who absorbs the coin values of the defeated shoppers.

There’s also a chance for a special character to appear, the Karen. She has a higher coin value than other characters and always wins in a brawl. She also occupies two adjacent reels simultaneously, making her the most dangerous character on the reels.

The Bonus feature ends when at least one character reaches the counter. Though you may have valiantly passed away raising shareholder value, the company will be sure to add the bonus winnings to your balance.

The Super Bonus plays out in the same manner. The only difference is that the screens can never show blanks, which extends the feature’s lifespan. You activate the Super Bonus by landing four Scatters.

The Store

In the spirit of irresponsible Black Friday spending, the slot has kitted out its store with all kinds of exciting bonuses you can buy. This includes everything from boosters and highlight reels to activations of the Bonus Round. There are even Loot Boxes if you’re feeling lucky.

Black Friday RTP and Payouts

The Black Friday slot has an above-average RTP of 96.35%. The top prize is an impressive 20,000x your stake, which matches the game’s super-high variance.