Blood Diamond: Slot Overview
Blood diamonds, also known as conflict diamonds, are diamonds that are mined in war zones and used to fund activities such as terrorism, war efforts, and so on. The concept was explored in the 2006 film ‘Blood Diamond‘ starring Leonardo DiCaprio, sporting an impressive Zimbabwean accent, and has been brought over to the reels and ways of online gambling in a slot of the same name. Titled, therefore, Blood Diamond, it serves as a vehicle for developer Nolimit City to explore a darker side of the diamond industry alongside synced reels, xNudge Wilds, and a whole lot more.
Blood Diamond is probably not the slot you want to play to get a taste of Nolimit City’s irreverent wave in the face of convention-style humour. There are certainly no toilet jokes this time around as players find themselves ‘deep in the desert’ where the mining of precious rocks is paid for in ‘sweat, tears, and plenty of blood.’ Much like the Leonardo Decaprio film, one man has found an enormous chunk of shiny carbon and is willing to risk life and limb stealing it from the nasty mine owners. Guess it would be a tempting way for people in that situation to gain a chance at freedom with big wads of blood diamond money rather than let baddies profit from it.
The gaming takes place on a 5×4 grid with 1,024 ways to win, which stays that way since there is no splitting of symbols or reel expansion. With a top RTP of 96.14%, players may wager 20 c to $/€100 per spin and have access to numerous boosters and buys. In this highly volatile slot, winning combinations are formed when matching symbols land on at least 3 adjacent reels starting from the leftmost side of the matrix.
Blood Diamond lands 10 pay symbols on its reels. Five are walkie-talkies, chains, whips, guns, and fist-clenching diamonds, while the high pays are made up of 5 character symbols. Winning combinations of 5 low pays award 0.5-0.7 times the bet, or 1 to 2 times the bet is paid for hitting 5 character symbol combinations. The character symbols can land in sizes of up to 1×4, counting as the number of positions they cover on the reel. Regular wilds and all other wilds substitute for any regular paying symbols and are worth 2x the bet for a 5 wild symbol win.
Blood Diamond: Slot Features
As its features, Blood Diamond has Chained Reels, xNudge Wilds, xNudge Desire, 3 bonus rounds, Nolimit Boosters, and a range of bonus buys.
Modifiers
- Chained Reels – Chained Reels may activate on any spin. When they do, 2 or more reels are linked, meaning the same symbols land adjacent to each other on all linked reels.
- xNudge Wild – An xNudge Wild is a wild symbol that always nudges to cover the reel, and each nudge increases the xNudge Wild’s multiplier by 1. When more than one xNudge Wild is part of the same win, the multipliers are added together. The xNudge Wild multiplier acts as a win multiplier.
- xNudge Desire – xNudge Desire triggers on any main game spin, adding 1 to 5 xNudge Wilds to the reels. If an xNudge Wild is added to a Chained Reel, all Chained Reels will contain the xNudge.
Oppression Spins
Landing 3 scatters awards 5 Oppression Spins. The third scatter, a Big Bonus scatter, awards one of the following upgrade features during the bonus trigger – additional spins, additional win multiplier, additional guaranteed Chained Reels, guaranteed xNudge Desire on each spin, Guaranteed xNudge on each spin, or the max win.
During Oppression Spins, at least 2 reels will always be chained on each spin. Any multiplier from an xNudge Wild or Big Bonus symbol is persistent throughout the round. Up to 3 Big Bonus symbols may land on a spin during the feature, awarding one of the upgrade features. Each extra xNudge Wild from the Big Bonus guarantees an extra xNudge Wild on each spin.
Domination Spins
Landing 4 bonus symbols triggers 5 Domination Spins, which have the mechanics of Oppression Spins, plus each of the 2 Big Bonus symbols awards an upgrade during the bonus trigger.
Enslavement Spins
Landing 5 bonus symbols triggers 5 Enslavement Spins, which also has the mechanics of Oppression Spins, plus each of the 3 Big Bonus symbols awards an upgrade during the bonus trigger.
Nolimit Booster & Bonus Buy
At 3x the bet, players can activate the xBet, which guarantees a Bonus scatter symbol on reel 1 or 2. Costing 7x the bet, the Chained Reels Booster guarantees to activate the Chained Reels feature. Next is the xNudge Booster, where for 35x the bet, the player is guaranteed an xNudge Wild, while 500x buys the xNudge Desire. Players can also buy the free spin rounds. Oppression Spins cost 85x the bet, Domination Spins cost 200x, Enslavement Spins 500x, and a lucky draw option is 261x the bet.
Blood Diamond: Slot Verdict
The diamond industry is a funny one, isn’t it? Not haha funny, but take the case of brown-coloured diamonds, for instance. Apparently, where once they were seen as only fit for industrial use, a clever marketing technique referring to them as ‘chocolate diamonds’ shifted their perception, causing a rise in demand for brown diamonds by jewellery makers and wearers due to their now desirably earthy look. Perhaps this is more a reflection of consumer manipulation and desire manufacture than anything else.
Speaking of desire, there were a few somethings about Blood Diamond’s gameplay that came across as a sort of Twin Spin meets Immortal Romance type deal. To be fair, Nolimit City has been pretty upfront about possible third-party influence, as, for instance, the xNudge Desire feature has a very similar name to the infamous Wild Desire feature from Games Global‘s (then Microgaming’s) vampire classic. As a result, such familiarity with two of the key features means Blood Diamond isn’t exactly oozing mechanical originality, but extras like bonus round upgrades are able to boost the free spins experience, and this is a game that may improve when more features are simultaneously firing. Interestingly, despite a slot focusing on bare naked wealth grabs, Blood Diamond is a surprisingly modest potential game for Nolimit City, topping out at 14,780 times the stake.
Just as conflict diamonds are no laughing matter, there aren’t many chuckle moments in Blood Diamond the slot. Even when wallowing in some dark places, Nolimit City slots are often shot through with stabs of humour to lighten the mood. Not so much Blood Diamond, which takes heavy subject matter and ensures cheap laughs are left out of the mix so as not to dilute the seriousness. Slots like Mental/Mental 2 do a similar thing, but there’s something about the grim reality of things like greed, slavery, and exploitation that caused Blood Diamond to be a more thematically sobering experience than they usually are from Nolimit City. Not irreverently making everything the butt of a cheap joke is no bad thing, though, and as well as a slickly produced show, the scarcity of conflict diamond-associated online slots helps raise the originality stakes
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