Book of Shadows

Book of Shadows is a 5 reel slot that has a book mechanic and was released about a year ago by Nolimit City game provider. When it was initially released, I wasn't too excited about this game, just because I thought it's yet another book slot and it's no secret there's already a lot of those out there. However, after seeing some big hits from other players I decided to try my luck with the slot. 

As you can imagine, the game is inspired by a dark theme, it's a bit spooky and almost haunted but I do like the color-scheme and it gives me Halloween vibes. Aside from that, the game offers something more unusual- you can choose whether to play it on 3 rows, 4 rows or 5 rows. Of course, that comes with additional cost, while playing with 3 rows comes with a minimum of 10 cent stake. 

When it comes to the base game, I don't find it very exciting. If you play with 5 rows, you can possibly get more winning combinations due to having more lines open. Also, you can lock certain reels for additional cost and respin other reels, which can help to land the bonus quicker. But it can become quite cosgly, which is why I prefer not using this "lock reel" option. Also I usually skip to just buy the bonus, which again is possible in 3 different levels, depending on how many rows you want to have active. I usually go with the most volatile option of 5 rows active. Then you get your typical book bonus, where you get 10 free spins and one symbol is your special expanding symbol. However, what makes it stand out is the fact that if you're not happy with your special symbol, you can switch it once- of course there's no guarantee that the next special symbol will be a better one. Then, whenever the symbol lands, it will expand, which is why it's better to play on all 5 rows for bigger win potential. 

Having said that, in my experience it's very difficult to get good wins from the bonus round, it definitely is a very high volatility bonus that pays all or nothing. For the most part, even if my special symbol is a low paying symbol, I've never had a full screen of any symbol. But of course I've seen numerous other players getting full screen of top symbols, so it's definitely possible.

Overall, it's an average game with spooky design and high volatility. But somehow I rarely find myself playing this game, as good base game hits are rare and good bonus hits are even more rare. Certainly not in my top list from Nolimit City.

Honestly speaking, I did not expect a games provider such as Nolimit City would do a ‘Book’ game, as I personally think that it wouldn’t suit their kind of games, but how wrong can anyone be? So I was really surprised to see this new game from them, entitled Book Of Shadows, basically having the same game concept, but with minor additions and alterations to suit Nolimit City style of games.

The game has a standard 10 playlines as in other ‘Book’ games, but this can be increased to 15 or 20 lines, but I’ve already told you that a 10 cents bet per spin game isn’t their style right? Fans of Nolimit City may play with the full 20 playlines, if so desired, but not me, never me. I always play with the least possible playlines, even if it means playing with just 1 line per spin! Stingy? No, no money! Hahaha.

The win values of all the symbols are similar to other ‘Book’ games but are not identical. Getting 5 Books, which is the Wild and the Scatter symbol, would pay a very nice 500x instead of the usual 200x. The top paying regular symbol, the Girl, maintains the 500x win value, but the rest would pay from 150x down to 10x instead of 200x to 10x. Nonetheless, an excellent paytable and win values, more so if played with the full 20 playlines, for even bigger wins than the usual amounts. Once again, I’ve told you that Nolimit City would not follow the others, nor the standard, right? Hehehe.

Nope, that’s not everything that has been changed either. During base game play, you can lock up to 4 reels to try and get the winning combination that you desire, but locking each reel would cost a lot more, which may seem so illogical to lock more than 1 reel at any one time. The total cost would be hundreds of times more for just that 1 spin with 4 locked reels! But, as we know it, there are indeed some players out there who would be willing to take such risks, no matter what it may cost them. Yeah, we call them the filthy rich gamblers! Hahaha.

As far as I am concerned, my one and only play session on this Book Of Shadows game was not much different from any other ‘Book’ game, meaning, it wasn’t that good, but wasn’t that bad either. That’s because I played with only 10 playlines, not 20, and one session on it can never give the best payout. I’m not a fan of Nolimit City games, so being yet one more so-so game to me, I quickly quit playing it upon getting a decent 165x win from it. Would I play it again in the future? Certainly not, simply because the game doesn’t offer selectable playlines that I so desire.