Buried by Night Slot Review

Hacksaw Gaming goes back to its dark Western theme with Buried by Night, due out in November 2026. If you're familiar with their older title Duel at Dawn, the name alone will ring a bell. Here the duel is fought across a row of the board, and the gameplay keeps the high volatility Hacksaw is known for.

The standout feature here is the "DuelRow." When a VS symbol lands on the middle three reels, it expands horizontally into a row of wilds. But there's a classic Hacksaw condition: it only becomes a DuelRow if the stretched row actually completes a winning combo. Because the game pays left-to-right, landing a VS on reel four is completely useless unless you already have a win running through reels one and two to connect with it.

When it does trigger, it's a lot of fun. Two gunslingers appear holding multipliers ranging from 2x up to 100x. They shoot it out, and the survivor's multiplier applies to your win. Interestingly (and sometimes painfully), the higher multiplier doesn't automatically win. Watching a 2x duelist gun down a 3x duelist is a uniquely frustrating experience. However, if you get multiple DuelRows on the same win, they add together, which is where the game's massive potential really lies.

I played through the bonus features, and true to form, they can be hard going if you aren't lucky.

• Trigger Warning (80x bet): This gives you 10 free spins with more VS symbols on the reels. I bought this one and it only returned about 20% of the cost. My entire payout basically came from a single spin where a 4x DuelRow managed to connect. It's very much a "boom or bust" feature.
• Shoot To Kill (200x bet): This 8-spin super bonus is much more engaging. It features a progressive meter that fills up when you land scatters. Every three steps awards a "DuelSpin", a special spin that guarantees a VS symbol and introduces a nudge mechanic that drops the reels down one row at a time, paying out at each step. I bought this and made about a third of my money back. I only reached the first tier, but I got a 2x survivor that locked in and paid out four times in a row as it nudged down the board. You can easily see how this could go crazy with a higher multiplier.
• Hot 100 Bonus: This is the game's holy grail. It awards a single free spin with continuous nudges until 100 wins are counted. You can't buy it, so you just have to get lucky in the base game.
• Fast Hands (60x bet): If you just want quick action, this 60x-per-spin mode guarantees at least one VS symbol (though it blocks bonus scatters). It's the quickest way to see a duel, though at 60x a spin it's an expensive one.

If you're a slot nerd, you'll notice Buried by Night has a lot in common with other games. Next to Duel at Dawn it plays on a 5x4 board with 14 lines rather than a 5x5 grid. It runs at a slightly higher 96.32% RTP and shares the same 15,000x max win.

The conditional wild expansion feels just like Hacksaw's LIT City or Trials of Zeus, where special symbols are useless unless a payline is already doing the heavy lifting. The multiplier duel concept is also very similar to Betsoft's Good Girl Bad Girl 2. But while Betsoft always lets the higher multiplier win, Hacksaw's twist of letting the lower multiplier survive some of the time gives this game a much grittier, unpredictable edge.

Buried by Night is a solid, beautifully dark slot. It can be incredibly harsh on the wallet, and the conditional expansion can definitely test your patience. But the mechanics are clever, and when those horizontal multipliers finally line up and survive the duel, it's an absolute thrill.