San Quentin Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

San Quentin Review

NoLimit City had a very successful 2020, and with San Quentin xWays they’ve already - in the very first month of 2021 - released a strong contestant for the game of the year awards. This developer keeps pushing boundaries like few others, and even the theme of this game is somewhat unheard of. Parody prison slots exist in abundance, yes, but nothing with this kind of gritty realism has ever been let loose before.

Granted, the designers have wisely taken the edge off somewhat with the semi-realistic, cartoon-style visuals, and the soundtrack sounds like a never-ending Metallica intro. You’ll meet Crazy Joe, Heinrich 3rd, Loco Luis, Biker Bill and Beefy Dick on the reels, with guard towers looming in the background. Bring your sharpest shiv, and be careful with the soap, cause this brutal beast might just turn you into its bitch before you can say “Lockdown”.

San Quentin Slot Reel Screen

San Quentin slot Features

Both the top and bottom rows of the reels are locked Enhancer Cells positions. Look closely, and you will see inmates work out or walk restlessly back and forth in their respective cells. The Enhancer Cells will open when you land 1 or 2 scatters, and they reveal premium symbols, wilds, xWay symbols or Razor Splits symbols.

If you get the Razor Splits symbol from an Enhanced Cell, all regular symbols on that reel will split in two, increasing the number of win ways accordingly. If you get a Razor Splits from both the top and bottom position, the regular symbols split into 4. The xWays symbol will always reveal a randomly chosen matching symbol in stacks of 4.

The scatter symbol is a depiction of a guard tower, and you need 3, 4 or 5 scatters anywhere in sight to trigger the Lockdown bonus round. This gives you 1, 2 or 3 Jumping Wilds, respectively. How many free spins you get is decided randomly by numbers between 1 and 3 that appear in the open Enhancer Cells. The Enhancer Cells from the triggering reels will remain open throughout the Lockdown Spins feature.

The reels will then spin to determine which one of the 5 inmate symbols that will be beefed up with a multiplier.

You can also get the Jumping Wild as your chosen symbol here. The triggering reels land with a mystery symbol, and you get the same multiplier value attached to the randomly chosen symbol as the number of scatters you triggered the feature with.

San Quentin Slot Free Spins

The Lockdown Spins take place in the yard, and more precisely on the basketball court. You will see silhouettes of inmates cheering on the riot, as cells are burning in the background. The Jumping Wilds move around to random positions on each free spin, but they can also come with multipliers attached. A Razor Split will effectively double the multiplier value on any Jumping Wild on the same reel.

You can double the jumping multiplier wilds all the way up to x512, but this is not a regular win multiplier as you might be used to from other games. Instead, the multiplier value indicates the number of wild symbols contained in that position.

When you land a scatter symbol on a free spin, both Enhancer Cells on that reel are opened and you get an extra free spin. The scatter then becomes a Jumping Wild, unless you already have 3 from before.

As usual from NoLimit City, non-UK players have the option to buy the bonus round. You can choose between 1, 2 or 3 Jumping Wilds, and the price tag for the most potentially lucrative option became legendary long before the game was even released.

You will need to cough up a whopping 2,000x your stake for 3 Jumping Wilds, while 1 or 2 Jumping Wilds will set you back 100x and 400x your stake, respectively.

Your best shot at the 150,000x max win comes from the 3 Jumping Wilds option, and the RTP also increases to 96.95 %, if you dare.

The 200 Spins San Quentin slot Experience

NoLimit has stated that they are unsure if the world is ready for this game, but we’ve certainly been ready for a long time. After a while of base game grinding, we couldn’t wait any longer, so we decided to buy the Lockdown Spins feature. We went with the 2 Jumping Wilds option, and you can see how it all went in the 5-minute highlights video below. The bonus round starts around 1 minute into the video, if you just want the best part.

Review Summary

It’s safe to say that NoLimit City starts the new year with a bang. San Quentin xWays is not only a milestone release for the highly successful Swedish developer, but for the whole industry as such. The hardcore convict theme is daring enough, but then you have the insane 150,000x potential to boot.

Granted, it took 1.83 billion spins for that to happen during testing, and you should also know that you need the 5-scatter bonus round to stand a chance to get even close to such numbers.

The volatility is as brutal as the tattooed inmates depicted, and you will mostly land smaller payouts during the lengthy base game grinding sessions. Regular symbols are not worth all that much, and you need to rack up some serious Jumping Wild multipliers to truly benefit from the bonus round. As groundbreaking and “cool” as the 2,000x bonus buy option is, let’s face it, very few players will ever go there. This powder keg of a game is bound to be on everyone’s lips in 2021, and it might very well be that we’ve already seen the game of the year in the very first month.

Pros

• Enhancer Cell positions (top and bottom rows)
• Razor Splits and xWays mechanics
• Lockdown bonus round with Jumping Wilds
• Win up to 150,000x your stake

Cons

• Top-tier bonus round costs 2,000x to buy (not for UK players)

If you love San Quentin slot you should also try:

Punk Rocker - has a somewhat similar vibe as the game at hand, but it’s a few notches down on the badass scale. You will benefit from xWays mystery symbols here too, as well as respins with sticky wilds and a bonus round with 5 different modifiers.

Deadwood - is a gritty wild west slot from NoLimit City, and it’s loosely inspired by the HBO cult series by the same name. You can win up to 13,950x in the Shoot Out Free Spins round, and it combines the extras from the 2 lower-tier features.

Warrior Graveyard - is the hard-hitting follow-up game to Barbarian Fury, and NoLimit is not holding back in either of these titles. The game depicts the aftermath of war, and the progressive xNudge Multiplier will not reset in the bonus round.

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