Haunted House by Empire: ghosts, staircases and a busy feature board

Haunted House takes the ghost-house idea all the way through its artwork. The upper glass is a jumble of staircases, rooms, ghosts and grinning skulls, with the game positions woven into the building. It feels closer to a fairground ghost train than a serious horror film.

The three reels sit beneath that busy house. Bars and sevens feature prominently, while a row of numbered positions above the reels leads towards the feature area. Once your attention moves to the top glass, the winding route through the house becomes the centre of the game.

A 1–12 number display and Hi Lo markings sit to the left of the board. Across the house are cash and feature positions, question marks and reel-symbol combinations. The stairs help give the route a sense of movement between floors; they are a much more memorable setting than a plain ladder of prize amounts.

There is plenty of humour in the details, too. A ghost peers around the top-right corner beside a £5-jackpot marking, another hides around the title, and the little characters crowd the landings. The red cabinet frames all of it without making the glass any less chaotic.

The button panel separates the three Hold/Nudge controls from dedicated Hi and Lo buttons, followed by Exchange and Start/Gamble. That arrangement helps explain why this is more involved than a simple three-reel game: the feature and number gamble have their own controls.

Haunted House's charm is in that crowded, cartoonish presentation. If you remember the machine, it is likely to be the stairs and ghosts that come back first. They give the game a recognisable setting, even before the reels begin to turn.