Blood & Shadow

Cast evil incantations and command hordes of demons on the video slot from Nolimit City, Blood & Shadow. Summon fallen angels and hellhounds by collecting cascading symbols in a 5×4 ritual with 1,024 ways to pay. Work the spell for high-paying symbols and duos of sticky wild Candle Spins, before completing the final passage to enter Cursed Spins, where only high-paying deities remain for wins of up to 6,666x your bet.

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Slot Details

Blood & Shadow is a cascading video slot with 5 reels, 4 rows and 1,024 ways to pay as standard. The number of ways can increase due to a reel expansion up to 5×5 and xSplit symbols in Cursed Spins. You can dice with the devilish side of gaming from 0.20 to 100 credits per spin. Blood & Shadow has a 10/10 extreme volatility rating, a hit frequency of roughly 1 in 4, and a 96.16% RTP. Alternative RTP versions exist with 94.03% and 92.04%. Open the game info to determine the model at your chosen casino.

Black, red and white contrast provides a striking impact for Blood & Shadow. As seen before on Book of Shadow, the game features a graphic novel style of artwork that wouldn’t look amiss on a comic book shelf. Horrifying sound effects, shrieks and bangs complement the theme, which lacks a prominent musical score, adding to the eerie mood.

The pay symbols represent images of devilry and start at the low end with five hieroglyphic creature icons awarding from 0.15x to 0.6x your stake for five-of-a-kind. They are followed by five matching undead creatures for the medium pays, which award from 0.9x to 1.5x for five across the reels. Five high-paying demon symbols crown the evil evolution, and matching six will pay from 3x to 8x your stake.

A skull represents the wild symbol that substitutes all others except the heart scatter, which is squeezed and collected in the Ritual Bar beneath the reels before disappearing from view (more to that shortly).

Blood & Shadow Slot Features

Blood & Shadow will strike a familiar chord for players of Book of Shadow, Nolimit City’s 2020 ‘Book’ game with a whopping 30,338x bet potential, original gameplay, and ample reason for a closer look at this connected release.

Your basic game spin of Blood & Shadow will see you matching symbols on consecutive reels from left to right for a win. Winning symbols shatter and disappear from the reels, creating space for new and remaining symbols to cascade and fill. The cascading symbols can lead to new wins, in which case the process repeats until no more wins occur.

As wins are awarded, certain symbols are collected in the Ritual Bar beneath the reels, containing five stages of awards. Winning symbols will fill the Ritual Bar as follows:

• Medium Paying Symbol Win: One step for each winning symbol.
• High Paying Symbol Win: Two steps per winning symbol.
• Scatter Symbol: Ten steps per scatter symbol.

The Ritual Bar symbol collection resets between spins. Collect 20 symbols in a spin sequence to reach level 1, and then another 30 to fill Level 2 of the Ritual Bar. Gather a further 40, 60 and, lastly, 80 symbols to fill Levels 3, 4 and 5, respectively. Two Candle Spins are awarded each time for completing Levels 1 to 4 of the Ritual Bar. Candle Spins are free spins that are queued to play out automatically following any wins. The Ritual Bar progress does not reset between Candle Spins and keeps building providing the spin sequence continues.

Candle Spins feature sticky wild symbols on reels 2 to 5. Wilds that land during Candle Spins that are not part of a win will drop and stick to the base of the reel until part of a winning combination. Furthermore, upon completing each Level of the Ritual Bar, a low or medium-paying symbol is replaced with its high-paying demonic counterpart for any following cascades or Candle Spins.

Fill the Ritual Bar and reach Level 5 to activate the Cursed Spins bonus game. Cursed Spins will play out once the active spin sequence ends. During the bonus, the Ritual Bar is removed, the play area expands to 5 reels and 5 rows, and the reels feature high-paying symbols only. The round begins with six free spins and features an xSplit symbol that can land with directional arrows facing rows or reels.

Upon landing, the xSplit symbol will double the symbol count along the selected row or reel, splitting symbols before disappearing. Split symbols display a 2x for each split. Each scatter that lands awards an extra free spin and the bonus game ends when spins expire or you reach the maximum payout of 6,666x bet.

Where available, you can skip the base game and head straight for a bonus round using the Blood & Shadow Bonus Buy feature. For a fixed bet multiplier, you can purchase a bonus triggering spin or feature spin from the following options:

• Baphomet Rite | 96.18% RTP | 66x Bet: Triggers a spin that starts on Level 3 of the Ritual Bar with 6 queued Candle Spins. Three low and medium-paying symbols are replaced with high-paying demonic versions.
• 10 Cursed Spins | 96.10% | 500x Bet: Activates ten Cursed Spins.
• 1 – 5 Lucky Draw | 96.01% | 55x Bet: A triggering spin with a random outcome of Level 1 to 5 of the Ritual Bar.
• 3 – 5 Lucky Draw | 96.04% | 166x Bet: A random pick of a triggering spin of Level 3 to 5 of the Ritual Bar.

Final Verdict

Statistically speaking, Blood & Shadow doesn’t carry the expected standard from Nolimit City found in recent times. At 6,666x max win, the potential is the lowest seen for a while from the studio, and the game is missing the usual chaotic mix of features and modifiers that many fans will have grown accustomed to. The studio’s range of x-branded modifiers, normally sprayed liberally for bewildering effect, are not found in this release, which keeps only a single xSplit modifier for the Cursed Spins.

Blood & Shadow may not cut the usual headline-grabbing mustard served by the studio in the expected style, and is a curve ball in direction of content development, the game has some innovative gameplay that neatly ties symbol upgrades into the dark summoning theme. The action is easier to follow and bears tones of the studio’s younger years in development with much simpler, yet still dynamic formats. No Ante Bet feature may also please those who prefer simpler, more assured gaming.

Big wins will come from strings of cascading symbol collects mixed with duos of free spins, and will play out like a ritual of sorts with an age of potential from a single bet. Longer spin sequences lead to Candle Spins, which in turn, draw out higher-paying symbols and sticky wilds along the way. And crowning it all for complete incantations (symbol collects) are the Cursed Spins with splitting and high-paying symbols, which can make for a wicked crescendo of demonic-inspired wins.

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