Dead Men Walking: Slot Overview
If you think your job sucks, maybe try to find consolation in the fact that there is a very good chance someone, somewhere, is doing something far, far worse to earn a crust. Here, take the lead character in Nolimit City‘s slot Dead Men Walking, for instance. This chap is known as The Executioner, and his job is to end the lives of those sent to him for punishment, which has got to mess with your head. Then again, maybe not this guy’s head, as The Executioner lives by the saying ‘Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.’ So while the role of executioner is a world away from being a YouTuber, influencer, or TikTok sensation, or whatever the cool jobs are these days, as the game docs mention, ‘Who are we to judge, it’s a dirty job and someone has to do it.’
Say what you like about the Middle Ages, the era was extraordinarily creative when it came to designing instruments of torture and dispensing pain. Dead Men Walking, the game never sinks to obscene levels of depravity, fortunately, but players get a taste via shuffling hooded men, torture devices, and a general sense of doom and gloom. With its sepia filter, Dead Men Walking gives off creepy Mental vibes, as it immerses gamblers in an earlier era, as if they’re standing amongst a crowd of onlookers at a public execution in the town square.
Dead Men Walking’s play area or chopping block, if you’d like to consider it, is a 5×3 area with 17 paylines lining up winning combinations. From 10c to $/€200 may be wagered on each spin, with a list of boosters and feature buys also available to choose from. An 8 out of 10 score means Dead Men Walking is highly volatile, though not officially ‘Extremely’ so, and four RTP models have been designed, where 96.2% is the highest.
Instruments of pain dispensation make up Dead Men Walking’s paying symbols. There are six of them, awarding players 1.2x to 4x times their bet for hitting a 5 OAK winning combination. Help with doing so comes from regular wilds and xNudge Wilds, which substitute any of the paying symbols. Wilds also pay 4x the bet for a 5-of-a-kind combination.
Dead Men Walking: Slot Features
Dead Men Walking’s extras are three base game features, walking xNudge Wilds, Dead Man’s Gold bonus, Reaper’s Gold bonus, Extra Spins, Nolimit Boosters, and bonus buys.
Fire Pits
Three fire pits are displayed above the reel area, each one linked to a base game feature. When a feature is triggered, the corresponding fire pit ignites. The features appear as scrolls:
- xWays (orange scroll) – these symbols transform into a normal paying symbol, revealing 2-4 instances of the same kind, increasing the number of ways to win.
- Infectious Wild (red scroll) – transforms a random symbol and all instances of it on the reels into wilds. If more than one Infectious Wild lands, each randomly chooses a different symbol to transform.
- xSplit (grey scroll) – splits all symbols on its row, doubling the symbol size, converting itself wild. Scatters and itself cannot be split.
xNudge Wilds
xNudge Wilds are stacked wild symbols that always nudge to cover their reel. Each nudge increases the wild multiplier by +1. When fully visible, Dead Man’s March triggers, moving the xNudge Wild one step to the left on respins, increasing its multiplier by +1. If an xNudge Wild reaches the leftmost reel and other xNudge Wilds are present, it transfers its multiplier to the nearest one. Dead Man’s March continues until the last xNudge Wild reaches the leftmost reel.
Dead Man’s Gold Bonus Spins
Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters triggers 3, 4, or 5 Dead Man’s Gold Bonus Spins, respectively. Bonus Spins play on a 5×5 grid where only coins may land. The spin count remains intact if a coin lands. When 3 or more coins align vertically or horizontally, they are collected and paid out. Coins either display bet multipliers or they are feature coins. Feature coins are triggered when they are collected:
- Collector – collects the value of all active coins.
- Cloner – copies the highest coin value to all active coins.
- Multiplier – doubles the value of all visible coins.
- King’s Grace – resets the spin count to its initial value.
Reaper’s Gold
Hitting 3, 4, or 5 gold scatters triggers 3, 4, or 5 Reaper’s Gold Bonus Spins, respectively. As well as the mechanics of Dead Man’s Gold, feature coins trigger as soon as they land.
Feature Buys
Players may get the chance to buy an extra spin when a round ends. The additional spin will keep the multiplier state of the symbols from the previous spin, and its cost will be calculated based on the multiplier values. The extra spin opportunity will only be presented if the cost is less than or equal to the win of the previous spin.
Booster 1 costs 1.5x the bet and makes it more likely to activate Dead Man’s Gold, because when at least one scatter hits, 1-4 extra scatters may be added to the bonus board. Booster 2 costs 2.5x to upgrade scatters to gold scatters. Booster 3, at 5x the bet, makes it more likely to trigger Reaper’s Gold (the way Booster 1 does, except with gold scatters), and at 40x the bet, Booster 4 guarantees at least 1 xNudge Wild. Players can also buy into different bonus features. Dead Man’s Gold or Reaper’s Gold may be bought for 100x or 300x, respectively. 800x buys Dead Man’s Gold Spins & xNudge, while a lucky draw costs 500x the bet.
Dead Men Walking: Slot Verdict
Slots, huh, one minute you’re skipping through a candied fairy tale or rubbing shoulders with fruit, then the next thing you know you’re part of a crowd of Medieval townsfolk about to witness a condemned man’s head get removed from his body. Well, that level of gore isn’t really on display in Dead Men Walking, but the buildup and connotations are there. And once again, Nolimit City has braved thematic ground that a lot of other slot makers wouldn’t dare tread. It is a heavy topic, though Dead Men Walking never gets overly dour, and the game’s title ties directly to one of its key mechanics.
That is the ability of xNudge Wilds to walk across the reels, triggering respins and sharing multipliers. The xNudge Wilds feature appears regularly in Nolimit City’s work, but till now they’ve typically gotten the job done by nudging, substituting, and multiplying, having done so to great effect in slots such as Brute Force Alien Onslaught, Tombstone Slaughter, or Deadwood RIP. Now, they walk, and while walking, they pass on multiplier values to those on their right-hand side, which makes for interesting moments. In fact, they made for the most exciting moments in the review. Other modifiers perform as expected, splitting or infecting other symbols, also helping the base game be a potentially exciting place. The bonus rounds are interesting. Straightforward, pacey hold ‘n’ win stuff, with several feature symbols boosting the action. Keep in mind, you don’t simply collect the values of landed coin symbols at the end of the round, but only those which create a line of 3 or more. Spins only remain intact and don’t fully reset when new coins land either, the King’s Grace is the sole coin which can do that, so it might take time for hold ‘n’ win traditionalists to adjust.
Dead Men Walking might not face accusations of being a vehicle for Nolimit City’s most creative innovations, but there is a newness to the walking xNudge Wilds, and the paying out only when lines of 3 or more coins form in the bonus rounds has a novelty to it. As does the theme, and hovering above it all is winning potential of 25,313x the bet, meaning Dead Men Walking might not be an all-time Nolimit City shockwave, but it certainly beats being torn apart in a Medieval dungeon.
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