Horses for Courses
You don’t have to be a horse lover to enjoy this slot but it certainly helps. The themed symbols, specifically Black Beauty and another one featuring a trio of white horses, have been rendered in great detail and depth. Unfortunately the same can’t be said of the remaining symbols, which are lacklustre and uninspiring. The same criticism applies to the reels, which comprise nothing more than a plain brown background.
The game’s logo, featuring the famous horse, is far more pleasing to behold and the backdrop behind the reels – what you can make out of it – is also impressive. From a visual perspective, that’s where the plaudits end unfortunately. Other symbols include a horse’s saddle, a brown-haired girl, a tiara and a necklace with a horse pendant attached. The playing card symbols are non-descript.
Cantering Reels
Black Beauty is a 20 payline game, though you can deactivate 10 of these if desired. The line bet varies, making a minimum 0.20 bet and maximum of 12.00 – and there’s an auto play option. Hit the spin button and the reels set off at a fair canter – like horses in fact. In the base game, the trio of white horses are the most coveted regular playing symbol, followed by the saddle. The attractive brown-haired girl is wild and will substitute for all other symbols except for scatter.
You’d think that Bally Wulff would have made Black Beauty wild – as wild as horses – but instead the creature plays the role of scatter, with the potential to secure you 10 free spins. There’s an autospin option built in incidentally, as you’d expect, and there’s also turbo spin, which can be activated by clicking the gear wheel icon in the top left of the screen.
A Reel Beauty
Most of the action to be had in Black Beauty will come on the reels, with wild and scatter your only means of winning any real cash. When you do land three or more scatters in view, the animation that’s applied brings Black Beauty to life as the horse moves gracefully. Any time you record a win on the reels, you can gamble with it; this is an option that appears in most of Bally Wulff’s slots. Guess the colour of the spinning card, red or black, to double your winnings or lose the lot. You can gamble up to five times in a row in this manner.
Horsing Around
The closest slots to Black Beauty in terms of gameplay are, naturally, other slots by Bally Wulff. You’ll encounter the features built into this game such as the gamble option in many of their other games. They also deploy wilds and scatter in the same manner. There doesn’t appear to be any other Black Beauty-themed slots out there, but there are plenty which involve horses.
Admittedly, these games don’t really capture the magic of a 19th century novel about an ill-treated horse, but then you couldn’t realistically expect them to. For something vaguely along the same lines – or with an equine connection at least – you could try Ainsworth’s Flying Horse or Lucky Horse.
A Beauty?
Black Beauty isn’t the greatest slot you’ll ever play and its features in particular are lacking. It’s a game with some nice touches to it though, not least the horses themselves who are nicely rendered and animated. While by no means Bally Wulff’s worst game, it’s not great either. Still, if you’re a fan of the story it’s based on, by all means give this game a go.
