Dead West: Slot Overview
Wild West slots blow across online casino lobbies like a tumbleweed infestation. The more successful ones embed deep in the gambling consciousness, while others blow in and out of town like an unwanted hobo. Software provider NetEnt has proven in the past that it’s got the cajones to duel with the baddest hombres in the genre, having released a couple of the most memorable Western slots to date, Dead or Alive and Dead or Alive 2. With that in the back of the mind, we come to Dead West, a scatter paying slot with more features than the one-horse town it’s set in has inhabitants.
Wild West slots aren’t exactly known for being bright, shiny, rays of sunlight (though there are exceptions), but Dead West is about as bleak as they get. This frontier town, stuck between nope and never heard of it, looks like it was abandoned a long time ago and left to melt back into the wilderness. Why? Maybe the jobs dried up, the local mine was tapped out, or something more sinister occurred; who can say? A skeleton pay symbol and the word ‘dead’ in the title suggest something bad drove folk out of town, making Dead West a better match for players who prefer the darker, seedier side of the Wild West.
Dead West is a scatter paying slot played on a 6×7 grid with a special Feature Lane located above the main reels. Winning combinations are formed when 8 or more matching symbols land anywhere on the gaming area, feeding into an RTP of 96.03% at best, with three lower options available. Highly volatile, players may stake 20c to $/€40 per game round.
Pay symbols are Q, K, A, bullets, guns, soft toys, and three character symbols. Hitting 8 OAK pays 0.05x to 1x the bet, up to 500x for 17+ OAK. Winning symbols are taken off the reels, allowing feature symbols to fall from the Feature Lane and other symbols on the main area to fill the gaps. If another win hits after a symbol drop, another avalanche triggers.
Dead West: Slot Features
Building on the scattering effect and avalanches, there are two wild types: Hot Zones, Feature Lane features, free spins, and an assortment of feature buys.
Wild Symbols
Dead West has two types of wilds, regular 1×1 wilds, and 2×2 or 3×3 colossal wilds. Colossal wilds can randomly appear on vertical reels, while regular wilds appear on the Feature Lane. When an avalanche occurs on a reel below a regular wild, it drops onto the reels. Wilds substitute for regular paying symbols, and the 2×2 or 3×3 count as 4 or 9 wilds, respectively.
Hot Zone
At the beginning of each spin, at least 2 random positions on the main reels are highlighted as Hot Zones. Each Hot Zone has a multiplier of x1, x2, or x3, and when a symbol in a Hot Zone is part of a win, the win is multiplied by the sum of all Hot Zones in that winning combination. After the winning combination disappears, before the next avalanche, each Hot Zone multiplier part of that win increases by +1. Hot Zones persist through the round sequence and carry over to free spins.
Special Features
Special symbols may appear in the Feature Lane above the grid. Their feature is activated when the special symbol falls onto the grid after an avalanche. Its feature triggers when there are no more wins. When the feature action concludes, the next avalanche takes place. Feature activate in an order of Expand, Expand+, Multiply, Swap, and Bomb.
- Bomb – explodes along with all adjacent symbols, except scatters, wilds, Swap symbols, or unused multipliers.
- Swap – transforms itself and all adjacent symbols except scatters, wilds, Bombs, or unused multipliers, into the same type of symbol. If a symbol is transformed by a Swap symbol, then again by another Swap feature, it becomes wild.
- Multiply – has a value of x2 or x3, which multiplies the value of all multipliers on its reel and adjacent reels.
- Expand – its position becomes a Hot Zone. If it lands in a Hot Zone, the position becomes an upgraded Hot Zone, getting a multiplier that is the sum of all Hot Zone multipliers in view. If an upgraded Hot Zone is part of a win, its multiplier increases by 1 before the next spin or avalanche. If an Expand symbol lands in an upgraded Hot Zone, it becomes a persistent Hot Zone, and its multiplier is once again upgraded to the sum of all Hot Zones in view. When a persistent Hot Zone is part of a win, its multiplier increases by 1, and it also adds the combined values of all multipliers around it to its own multiplier for the next avalanche/spin.
- Expand+ – its position and up to 8 adjacent positions become Hot Zones. If it lands on or transforms a position with a Hot Zone, it becomes an upgraded Hot Zone, and its multiplier is upgraded to the sum of all Hot Zone multipliers around it. If an Expand+ lands on or transforms an upgraded Hot Zone, it becomes a persistent Hot Zone, and its multiplier is again upgraded to the sum of all Hot Zones around it. When a persistent Hot Zone is part of a win, its multiplier increases by 1, and it also adds the combined values of all multipliers around it to its own multiplier for the next avalanche/spin.
Free Spins
In the main game, getting 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters awards 5, 8, 10, or 12 free spins, respectively. During free spins, the same number of spins is awarded again when getting 3-6 scatters. Hot Zones persist between free spins.
Elevate Feature
At the Elevate section, players can activate the Scatter Hunt for 1.5x to increase the chance of getting free spins. At 5x the bet, the Feature Lane Max guarantees to fill the Feature Lane on every spin. For 30x the bet, the Hot Zone Frenzy starts with every position on the reels highlighted as Hot Zones. As for bonus rounds, free spins may be bought for 100x, or super free spins for 300x, which starts with all positions on the Feature Lane filled.
Dead West: Slot Verdict
Barely a week goes by without some software provider looking longingly at the past and designing a slot that lets players pretend they’re feared gunslingers or fearless sheriffs. One of the strange things about the Wild West is that it lasted from around 1865 to 1900, give or take. This surprisingly brief patch of time has been an extraordinarily fertile one for popular culture, given it only lasted about the same length of time the Simpsons has been on TV (and they’re still going at the time of writing). Quite what keeps players and playmakers returning to the West might make an interesting psychological study. But the question today is what Dead West brings to the table.
For one thing, it’s a scatter pays Western, and there aren’t a ton of those to choose from, though Hoot Shot the Sheriff springs to mind, plus it’s set in about as desolate a spot as it gets, if that side of the frontier appeals. Most of all, it’s got a lot of features and mechanics to test drive, not only those injected onto the reels from the Feature Lane, but the whole Hot Zone concept to get to grips with as well. One thing Dead West is guilty of, at times, is triggering a lot of activity on a spin, but creating little in the way of actual financial reward. Things can heat up during free spins, where, as well as the burning town visuals and badass tunes, Hot Zones remain in place till the feature ends. Super free spins go a step further by filling the Feature Lane at the start, which can have a huge impact on Hot Zone multiplier values.
Dead West is a more complicated scatter pays slot than Sweet Bonanza 1000, for instance, so it took a bit more time to figure the whole thing out and appreciate what’s on offer. There’s a fair amount going on, and spins can take quite a bit of time to resolve themselves, going from win to cascade, to feature symbol drop, and around again, similar in some ways to Relax Gaming‘s Cluster Tumble, the owner of one lengthy max win video. Dead West comes with a max win of 10,863x the bet, and is worth a demo if scatter pays on the frontier sounds like fun.
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