Dead West

Dead West Review

The evergreen Wild West genre has been popular since the dawn of online slots, not least due to classic NetEnt contributions like Dead or Alive and Dead or Alive 2. Their latest installment, Dead West, stands out as a darker, grittier release than its predecessors, with a massive 6x7 grid placed in an abandoned frontier town. Death hangs heavy in the air, signaled by the dangling noose and the 2 crows sitting as grim spectators.

You can play with bet levels ranging from €0.20 to €100 per spin in the Dead West slot, catering to most types of players. You win by landing 8 to 17+ matching symbols anywhere in view, and the symbols consist of 3 gunslinger characters, a doll, a pistol, a bullet, and 3 royal symbols. All symbols pay 500x your stake for 17+ in view, while the minimum of 8 symbols in sight awards between 0.05x and 1x your stake.

Dead West Slot - Reels Screen

The Avalanche mechanic removes winning symbols, allowing new symbols to drop, including special feature symbols from the Feature Lane atop the reels. You’ll benefit from 5 different Feature Lane symbols in Dead West, and some of these will enhance multiplier Hot Zones in different ways. Hot zones appear randomly per spin, increasing their multiplier each time they are part of a win or avalanche win.

In addition, you can look forward to colossal wilds of up to size 3x3 in Dead West, and the Hot Zone multipliers only keep building without resetting in the bonus round. With a hit rate of 25%, you can expect quite frequent wins in this high volatility NetEnt release, and Dead West boasts a max win of 10,863x your stake. The top-tier RTP clocks in at 96.03%, but other possible RTP settings are 94.08%, 92.09%, and 88.09%.

Dead West Features

Be sure to check our Dead West free play demo located at the top of this review page, if you haven’t already, as this will give you first-hand experience of the features. If you want to learn all about the mechanics of this game first, however, simply dive in below.

Avalanche Feature

Winning symbols go up in smoke as they are removed from the reels, allowing existing, new, and Feature Lane symbols to drop down to fill the empty positions. If this leads to a new winning combination, the process repeats, and this goes on indefinitely as long as your winning streak lasts.

Hot Zone

At least 2 random positions become Hot Zones per spin, and these are highlighted with barbed wire and assigned with a multiplier of x1, x2, or x3. The hot zone multiplier boosts any win it is part of accordingly, and hot zone multipliers are added together before being applied if more than one hot zone is part of the same win. All hot zone multipliers that are part of a win increase their value by +1 for the next cascade. Hot zones remain in play per avalanche sequence and are carried over into the bonus round.

Feature Lane Symbols

The Feature Lane is a horizontal reel above the main reels, and it slides in blanks and/or feature symbols for each spin. The feature symbols become active if they drop down onto the main reels via the Avalanche mechanic, doing their thing when you hit a non-winning cascade. This can prolong your winning streak, and the feature symbols activate in the following order: Expand, Expand+, Multiply, Swap, and Bomb. Here’s an overview:

• Expand - turns into a Hot Zone or an upgraded Hot Zone if it lands in an existing Hot Zone. The upgraded Hot Zone is assigned a multiplier equal to the combined value of all present Hot Zone multipliers. The Hot Zone multiplier increases by +1 per win it is part of. If a new Expand symbol lands in an upgraded Hot Zone, it becomes sticky for the duration of the bonus round and once again increases its multiplier by the total value of all present Hot Zone multipliers. Persistent Hot Zones are upgraded with the value of all surrounding Hot Zone multipliers per spin and cascade.
• Expand+ - becomes a Hot Zone and also turns up to 8 surrounding positions into Hot Zones. Landing an Expand+ symbol in an existing Hot Zone turns it, and the surrounding Hot Zones, into upgraded Hot Zones. This upgrades the multiplier by the sum of all adjacent Hot Zone multipliers. If the Expand+ symbol lands in or transforms an upgraded Hot Zone, it becomes persistent. This means the multiplier once again is upgraded by the adjacent Hot Zone multipliers, and persistent Hot Zone multipliers increase by +1 plus the sum of all adjacent Hot Zone multipliers per spin and avalanche.
• Multiplay - boosts all Hot Zone multiplier on the same reel and on adjacent reels by either x2 or x3.
• Swap - turns itself and all adjacent symbols into playing cards mystery symbols, and these reveal a randomly selected matching pay symbol. Scatters, wilds, bombs, or unused multipliers are not affected by this feature symbol. If an already revealed mystery symbol is once again affected by a Swap symbol, it turns into a wild symbol.
• Bomb - explodes itself and all surrounding symbols, except wilds, scatters, swap symbols, and unused multipliers.

Wilds & Colossal Wilds

You’ll benefit from regular 1x1-sized wild symbols in the Dead West slot, in addition to colossal wilds of sizes 2x2 and 3x3. Regular wilds appear on the Feature Lane, while colossal wilds can land organically on the regular reels. Either way, wild symbols substitute for pay symbols to help complete or improve wins. The colossal wilds count as 4 or 9 regular wilds, respectively.

Dead West Free Spins

You need to land 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols on the same base game spin, or in the same avalanche sequence, to trigger the Bonus Round in Dead West, awarding 5, 8, 10, or 12 free spins, respectively. You can retrigger the bonus round to win extra spins the same way, and the only difference from the base game is that Hot Zones are persistent.

Dead West Slot - Free Spins

Dead West Bonus Buy (not UK)

The Elevate bonus buy menu is available in some regions, and it offers the following features and bonus round purchase options in the Dead West slot:

• Scatter Hunt - pay 1.5x your stake to boost your bonus round chances.
• Feature Lane Max - pay 5x your stake to remove blanks from the Feature Lane so that it’s filled with special feature symbols per spin.
• Hot Zone Frenzy - pay 30x your stake to get Hot Zones on every position.
• Bonus Round - pay 100x your stake to get at least 3 triggering scatters.
• Super Bonus Round - pay 300x your stake to get at least 3 triggering scatters and all positions on the Feature Lane filled with special feature symbols.

Theme & Graphics

The Dead West slot game plays out in an abandoned frontier town at dusk, the setting sun bathing the worn-down buildings in an ominous orange-red glow. A lone noose is dangling from a tree, hinting at the swift Wild West justice, while the grid is framed by barbed wire. A whistling, Morricone-inspired soundtrack builds an atmosphere of doom, and the reels are filled with gritty gunslingers, bullets, and what looks like the Grim Reaper in a cowboy hat.

Dead West Free Play

We know that reading about all the features can leave a dry taste in your mouth, which is why we would like to use this opportunity to remind you to test the free Dead West demo for yourself. Head up to the top of this review page to get started right away, and you can play for as long as you want without risking a single dime. After testing the Dead West free play version for a while, you may wanna check our recommended casinos below the demo, all confirmed to carry this title.

Pros and Cons of Dead West

Our Verdict

NetEnt used to be the king of Wild West slots back in the day, but lately, Nolimit City and Hacksaw have been leading the charge in this popular genre. Dead West seems inspired by several of the popular Western installments from both of these prolific developers. However, it’s a tad less gritty than what Hacksaw delivers, and several notches less gruesome and grotesque compared to NoLimit City’s top gunslingers.

That being said, Dead West is one of the best slots NetEnt has produced in recent years, and it never comes across as a copycat effort despite somewhat familiar features. The desolate frontier town creates an enjoyable, heavy atmosphere of impending doom, not least due to the excellent soundtrack. The game delivers on this notion when the whole town goes up in flames as the bonus round plays out. However, in terms of storytelling, Dead West is not up there with what NoLimit City does.

What Dead West slot does deliver is plenty of base game action. However, don’t expect your payouts to match the bells and whistles most of the time. If you enjoy that a lot of things are happening on most spins, this game is probably for you, and at least you’re winning something, which helps keep you afloat towards the main attraction. The Feature Lane-fuelled avalanches combined with Hot Zone multipliers can deliver solid payouts, no doubt about it, and it’s a spectacle when this thing fires on all cylinders.

The bonus round takes everything to the next level, as persistent Hot Zones can build impressive multipliers capable of cracking the 10,863x win cap from a single round. However, keep in mind that massive multipliers can lead to frustrating dead spins, so try to keep a cool head under fire to avoid going on tilt. The Wild West genre definitely needs more scatter pay slots, and Dead West is a solid release that may lack the x factor that would give it enough staying power to become a classic.