Slot Description
Dead Canary captivates the players with an offbeat reel design. The slot has five slanting reels, starting in a 3-3-2-2-1-1 formation, with 3 blocked rows, which change the formation to 3-4-3-4-3-4 upon unlocking. Therefore, the number of winning ways starts at 36 but can increase to 1,728 ways to win.
Wins land when three or matching symbols land on adjacent reels, starting from the leftmost position. Moreover, whenever winning symbols land, they explode and are removed from the reels. At the same time, an inactive row unlocks, and a fresh set of random symbols drops to fill the empty places.
Symbols and Payouts
As it is commonplace in several Nolimit City slots, Dead Canary also has 10 pay symbols divided into 5 high and low paying ones. Keep an eye out for the one-eyed miner (pun intended), who is the most-rewarding pay symbol and offers up to 7.50x the stake.
The game has two types of scatter symbols, which can land in any position, but the ones behind the barrier don't unlock until they are activated.
Bonus Features
A lot goes on in Dead Canary, but compared to other Nolimit City slots, they are relatively easier to understand.
Wild Mining
The Wild Mining feature gets triggered once you hit 3 or more symbols aligned diagonally but without any win. The feature starts with triggering symbols getting replaced by wild symbols. Based on the number of triggering symbols you had (3, 4, or 5), up to 3 wild bombs can land on the reels. The wild bombs trigger collapse for the next spin with a +1 multiplier. All symbols are liable to explode except for the xBomb symbol. Moreover, if scatter symbols are removed via explosion, they reappear in a random position in the following spin.
xBomb Wild
xBomb is a wild symbol that substitutes for all symbols except scatters and other xBombs. The symbol triggers collapse with an increasing +1 multiplier for the following collapse. If there are multiple xBomb wilds on the reels, all of them will detonate before the following collapse.
Canary Free Spins
Hitting 3 scatter symbols in the unlocked positions triggers the Canary Free Spins feature. The feature starts on a 4-3-4-3-4-3-4 grid where each of the four corners has a locked vault. You can unlock these vaults with xBomb explosions. Triggering scatter symbols are carried forward to the free spins, where each bird gets to have 3 hit points. The canaries positioned on the vaults move to any random position on the reels and generously award 3 free spins.
- Scatter symbols begin with x1 multiplier where the type of scatter you’ve got performs a specific function:
- Silver Cage Scatter: collects anything next to it in an x-shape.
- Gold Cage Scatter: collects everything from the same row in an x-shape
Vaults also serve the function of collecting anything that appears next to them. Once a bird's hit points are exhausted, it dies, awards the collected, and then is reborn with 3 hit points. The special symbols landing during the Canary Free Spins feature are:
- Coins: contribute their assigned value to the scatter upon collection.
- Multipliers: amplify a scatter's value by two or three upon collection
- Bomb: the bomb detonates, impacting symbols in an x-shaped configuration.Explosions remove one hit point from the scatter and unlock the vaults. It also resets the number of spins to 3.
- Upgrade: The Upgrade function elevates Silver scatters to the status of Gold scatters and provides hit points to the respective symbols.
- Gas: It diminishes one hit point from all adjacent canaries
- Dwarf – Collectible by a single scatter, it increases hit points. Upon collection, the scatter accumulates the values of all available scatters on each spin until it exhausts itself. Upon dying, he is reborn as a canary.
- Rat – Also collectible by a single scatter and useful in increasing hit points. Rats distribute their value to all other relevant scatters on each spin until they die off. Once dead, a rat is reborn as a canary.
After the feature concludes, values from all the unlocked vaults are added to the total win amount and paid out.
Nolimit Bonus
The Nolimit Bonus allows you to trigger the bonus feature instantly without playing the base game. To do so, you will have to pay the requisite sum:
- 68x the stake to trigger the bonus feature with 3 Silver Cages
- 500x the stake to trigger the bonus feature with 2 Silver Cages and a Gold Cage
- 284x the stake for a Lucky Draw, which randomly decides how many Silver and Gold Cages you will get out of 3.
- Although, in some jurisdictions, the buy bonus feature isn't included with the game.
Payout Statistics
Dead Canary is one of those extremely volatile heavy-hitters that, on a lucky day, can break all the barriers standing in front. With a max payout potential of 65,000x the stake, a lot goes into the game to keep players aiming for the grand prize. However, the probability of triggering the max win is extremely rare, and going by Nolimit City's official figure, it takes about 7 million spins to trigger the top win once. Irrespective of that, there's still a lot to play for in the game, as instances of incredible wins coming from the game suggests.
In our case, we managed to rope in a lucrative 1,477x the stake, which, even though it is nowhere close to the maximum prize, is still a cherishing sum on its own. And while the Dead Canary RTP of 96.02% isn't among the highest, it is understandable given the slot's extremely volatile nature. Another informative payout stat in Dead Canary is its hit frequency of 26.20%, which indicates a win in every 4-5 spins on average.