Play Rock Bottom Slot

Rock Bottom Review

The game tagline sets the tone in this bleak NoLimit City release, and it states ‘just because you’ve hit rock bottom doesn’t mean it can’t get worse’. Rock Bottom is set in a gloomy back alley in what looks like nocturnal New York, and you get to meet 5 sinister characters that take you on a journey through the 5 stages of grief. It’s a downfall story of loss, and you might recognize some of the characters if you take a closer look.

The Robert DeNero in Taxi Driver lookalike represents “anger”, while the flamboyant gay Freddy Mercury double represent “denial”. A pimp who looks like Prince represents “bargaining”, and the Tina Turner prostitute “depression”. A clown finally leads you into “acceptance”, and the journey goes through both a Headshrinker and Insanity bonus round for payouts up to 19,690x your stake.

Rock Bottom Slot - Reels Screen

Rock Bottom Slot Features

The Flush Bet (xBet) can be switched on/off between base game spins, and it costs 50 % more per spin to keep it on. The benefit is that you are guaranteed to land 1 scatter symbol on reel 2 on every spin. This increases your bonus round hit rate from 1 in 198 spins to 1 in 90 spins. The premium character symbols pay between 2.5 and 7.5 x your stake for 5 of a kind, and there is no regular wild symbol in this game.

Wilds can be generated, however, and the core function is to step in for pay symbols to help complete wins. You can land the xSplit symbol on reels 2 to 4 in the base game, and they become wild when they split. Character symbols on the same row on the middle reels are also split, or on adjacent positions on the last and first row. Characters can be split up to 3 times, to size 2, 4, or 8, and scatters, other xSplit symbols, or low-value symbols are unaffected.

You can land the bottle and pills scatter on any reel in the base game, and you need 3-4 in view to trigger the Headshrinker Bonus Round. Landing 5 scatters triggers the Insanity Bonus Round, and you get 5 free spins either way. You also get +1 extra spin per position the triggering scatters are nudged to reach the bottom row, and scatters serve double duty as wild symbols.

Both bonus rounds play out on a 3-reels grid, where only character symbols, scatters, and/or blanks can appear. You level up the feature for every 5th scatter you collect, and the Headshrinker feature can go from level 1 to 5. Each level up makes sure another character symbol fully expands when it lands, and this happens in chronological order from low to high.

Character symbols that remain on a level above the current have their win multiplier increased by +1 each time their respective symbols hit. You can keep track of this on either side of the active grid, and the multiplier applies to winning combos with the multiplier upgraded symbols.

Everything is the same in the Insanity Spins round, but now all expanding symbols act as wilds. In addition, the expanded symbols multiplier is added to a new symbol type when you win, and collected scatters give you +1 extra spin (and you get +2 extra spins when you level up).

If you win at least 1,969x your stake, you trigger the xCap feature. This is basically a pick game with no downside, and you’ll reveal multipliers of x2, x3, x5, x7, or x10 that boosts your total win. Just to be clear, you cannot lose your achieved win by making picks, as this is not a gamble feature. This Choose your Downfall game can crack the The 5 Stages of Grief max win screen if you reveal the x10 multiplier.

There is a Bonus Buy menu available in certain jurisdictions, but not in the UK for sure. Simply hit the yellow Star Icon, and you can purchase the Headshrinker Spins round for 75x your stake (RTP of 96.1 %). You need to pay 500x your stake for the Insanity Spins round (RTP of 96.18 %), or you can pick the random Lucky Draw that gives you a 20 % chance of the Insanity Spins and 80 % chance of the Headshrinker round (RTP of 96.36 %).

The 200 Spins Rock Bottom Slot Experience

You get to see a few base game spins, before we decide to switch on the Flush Bet feature. This nudged things in the right direction for us, as we triggered the Headshrinker Spins round organically not long after (or at the 1-minute mark, to be precise). We got 9 free spins for starters, and you can see for yourself how it went by hitting the play button below.

Review Summary

It’s nice to see a NoLimit City release where the volatility and insanity is toned down just a little bit, and by the latter we’re mostly referring to the game mechanics. Rock Bottom is hardly their most controversial, nor their best, release this year, and that’s saying something given the subject matter and the overall build quality. We got “dark side” Hacksaw Gaming vibes from this release actually, and we don’t mind the developer experimenting with a somewhat different form.

Humorous elements, like the characters resembling famous people, takes the edge off the bleakness, and you’ll have no trouble knowing what’s going on in the base game. The complexity is increased a bit in the bonus rounds, which is hardly unusual, and the 19,690x win cap has a 1 in 35m spins hit rate. The rate increases to 1 in 280K in the Headshrinker round, and 1 in 9K in the Insanity round. Where other developers would release a shelf-filler, NLC releases a game that’s still way above average.

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