A Familiar Darkness with a Romantic Twist
Moonlight Romance: The Awakening is the latest unreleased demo title from Microgaming, and yeah — if you’re getting Immortal Romance vibes, you’re not alone. It practically leans into it, with gothic visuals, haunting music, and a romanticised horror theme that slots fans will recognise instantly.
The difference? This one adds layered bonus mechanics and a unique way to unlock multiple bonus features in one go.
We jumped into the demo version over on the 10p Gamer Arcade, and here’s what we found.
Base Game: Smooth Spins and Familiar Feels
The betting range starts from 30p up to £15, and there’s a turbo spin mode for those who like to speed things up. UK players won’t see autoplay (thanks, Gambling Commission), but it’s available outside the UK along with bonus buy features.
Visuals are clean, symbols are bold, and the soundtrack is pure metal — genuinely one of the better atmospheric slots from Microgaming in a while. But while the theme and sound design are spot on, the base game wins felt a little underwhelming in our testing.
The Bonus Boxes: Green, Red & Blue
The standout mechanic here is the three bonus boxes — Green, Red, and Blue — which fill up as you spin. A box may randomly trigger at any time and award one of three free spins bonus rounds:
- Wild Spread: Adds wild symbols that can spread across the reels.
- Wild Multiply: Random symbols can gain multipliers.
- Wild Bloom: Classic Immortal Romance-style reels with full wild reels.
Each bonus has its own flair, and when you trigger multiple at once, they combine into extended bonus rounds that can seriously ramp things up — in theory, anyway.
Bonus Buys & Burned Wallets
In non-UK markets, you can buy the bonuses, either randomly (with 1–3 features) or fully stacked with all three bonuses unlocked. On 30p stake, the all-in buy costs £42, which is 140x stake. A hefty investment.
In our tests, we triggered:
- £11.15 return on a 30p base game bonus
- £23.70 return on a £42 triple-box buy
- £8.37 on another £42 buy
Let’s be honest: those results would sting if it were real cash. It feels like Wild Bloom has the most win potential, especially when you land full reels of wilds — but hitting those ideal setups is rare.
Final Thoughts: Worth the Hype?
Moonlight Romance: The Awakening is clearly aiming to recapture the Immortal Romance magic with a few twists — and visually, it’s got it down. The bonus box system is clever, and the ability to combine features adds variety.
💬 “We’d love to see this one spinning normally with a real £20–£30 balance just to see how it behaves in a regular session.”
From what we’ve seen in the arcade demo, the game can be very volatile, and those bonus rounds? Often more smoke than fire.
Still, this is a promising title that we’ll definitely revisit once it’s fully released.
10p Gamer Rating 7.5/10