Deadwood

The Wild West is a beloved theme for online slots and this is the second time Nolimit City dusts off the cowboy boots. Deadwood was released late April 2020 and quickly gained popularity in crypto casinos. Mainly due to the insane free spins modes.

Deadwood makes use of Nolimit City's popular and effective xNudge mechanics where almost-wins are turned into big wins through a nudge multiplier. The main attraction is the insanely well-designed Shoot Out Free Spins modes, which is one of the coolest bonus features you can experience. It not easy to hit and to buy oneself straight into one of them (there are two) costs at minimum 150 USDT – or 750x the minimum bet (which is 0.20 USDT per spin).

Some crypto casinos have capped the max bet to somewhere around 30 USDT but 100 is technically possible. The game has crypto support but few casinos use it for some reason.

In games with the winning mechanism "ways", we talk about ways in the sense of ways to win. These are calculated by multiplying the number of symbols that appear per reel identical symbols on adjacent reels to the right. In Deadwood we find 3 on the first reel, followed by three reels with 4 symbols, and the rightmost reel has 3. If you followed along with your calculator, it now shows 576.

The game has high volatility and a simulated maximum win has been recorded at 13,950 times the bet. We can safely say that this big win was made in one of the Shoot Out Free Spins rounds.

Symbols

The symbols consist of playing cards (low wins), stacked characters are wild, the sheriff's badge (2 activates the Shoot Out mode that turns all playing card symbols into wilds), a scatter symbol (of which 3 are required to activate the bonus round), and the following symbols pay a bit better (high to low):

• Gold Bars
• Clock
• Cracked safe
• Bottle
• Shotgun

If you've played slots with a nudge feature, you'll know that it's a kind of lifesaver: A small nudge moves a reel into a winning position after the reels have stopped. But here it is done with a multiplier and stacked wild symbols (the three main characters). Which makes it extremely powerful.

If some part the four-symbol high stacked wilds land on the screen, they will be nudged so that they cover the whole reel. For each nudge, the win multiplier increases by 1.

• Example: Say we land a wild with only the top or bottom part (1 symbol) showing, then three nudges will be made, and the win multiplier will be equal to 4x (1x+3x). So missing by more is better.

The sheriff's badge only exists on the first and last reels. Two of them activate what is known as the Shoot Out feature and provide an almost guaranteed win as all low paying symbols on the reels (on the three middle reels) turn into wilds.

Shoot Out During Free Spins

If the two sheriff's badges appear during any of the free spins modes, or coincide with three scatter symbols, the Shoot Out feature will remain for the rest of the free spins. In other words, the round is upgraded to the best of the game or active from the start.

A sheriff's badge will also give +1 Free Spins, which is either added to the current spin balance, or added to your original balance (8) if we activate the bonus round with a badge in place.

Shoot Out* can be active in both free spins modes (see below) and means that they will be played with at least 10 spins and all low paying symbols as wilds.

When Shoot Out is activated, the sheriff's badges are locked on the screen and no more free spins can be won.

As mentioned in passing, Free Spins in Deadwood are activated by the landing three scatter symbols. These only appear on the three middle reels, and you can only land one per reel. Together with one sheriff's badge you get to start with 9 spins, with two you get to start with 10 and Shoot Out activated.

When you activate the Free Spins mode, whether you buy it or spin it, you get to choose the type of spins you want to play.

Hunter Spins

The optimal choice in terms of RTP is the less (but still highly) volatile mode called Hunter Spins. Here, at least one stacked wild symbol is guaranteed per spin. Which of the three or how many of them appear is random.

See the xNudge section above if you're wondering how the nudge multiplier works.

Guns Slinger Spins

This mode is the most volatile in the game and is played with what is known as a "sticky wild multiplier" (persistent multiplier is another name in slot lingo). This means that all the wild multipliers that land are added up and kept for the rest of the free spins.

There are no guarantees that we'll land any, but if we do so early on, there's a good chance that we'll also win big during each subsequent free spin.