games

Blood & Shadow

Deep into the shadows of an abandoned cathedral lays a dark mist - where the underworld is free to roam, and immortality beckons. After decades of studying the forbidden arts, far away from any form of civilization, Shadow Girl has discovered a ritual for eternal youth. It's time to enact the ritual.

07-03-2023

Release Date

96.13%

RTP

Volatility

27.18%

Hit Frequency

1 in 97m

Max Win Probability

6 666 x bet

Max payout

1 in 10 030

Free Spins

4-4-4-4-4

Reels/Rows

Yes

Feature buy-in

Yes

Bonus mode

€0.20/€280.00

Min/Max bet

Blood & Shadow summary

Enter the dark and forbidden world of an abandoned cathedral in Blood & Shadow. Nolimit City invites you to join Shadow Girl as she performs a demonic ritual for eternal youth. The eerie action takes place on a five reel, four row grid that offers 1024 base ways to win, but the board can expand as the ritual progresses. If you are brave enough to face the underworld without spending any actual cash, you can play for free right here on Playin.com.

Base Game Mechanics and Features

The base game is fueled by a tumbling mechanic where winning combinations disappear so new symbols can fall into place. Every time you score a win with medium or high paying symbols, or land a scatter, you feed the Ritual Bar located at the bottom of the screen. Advancing through the five levels of the Ritual Bar removes lower paying symbols and converts medium symbols into high paying demonic entities. You will also encounter Sticky Wilds that drop to the bottom of the grid and remain there until they contribute to a winning connection.

Bonus Rounds and Free Spins

Progressing through the Ritual Bar unlocks the game's dynamic free spin modes. Reaching the first few levels awards Candle Spins to help keep your progression going. Maxing out the bar to level five unleashes the ultimate Cursed Spins feature. In this top tier bonus, the grid expands to a five by five layout featuring only high paying symbols. This is also where the xSplit mechanic becomes active, splitting rows or reels to multiply symbol sizes and massively increase your active win ways. You can test your dark magic skills and try out these mechanics by joining a free slot tournament to compete against other players for real rewards.

Volatility Rating and Potential

Nolimit City shows no mercy with this haunting release, giving it an Extreme volatility rating. Those who successfully complete the ritual can achieve The Pact is Sealed payout, which awards the maximum win potential of 6,666 times your base bet. Because the progression system and expanding grid mechanics require patience and understanding, entering the cathedral with virtual currency first is highly recommended. By utilizing your Playin coins, you can safely learn how the Ritual Bar and different free spin modes interact without risking any of your own real money.

Reviews

8.54

8.0

Bigwinboard

As mentioned, Nolimit City isn't particularly renowned for turning out symbol collecting/progress bar games, but it appears as if the team has been studying up on them. The one used in Blood & Shadows is a finely tuned example of a progress bar system that balances short-term rewards and feature triggers with longer-term ones. In some cases, much longer-term, but in saying that, Blood & Shadows wasn't a game that felt like it required a drawn-out torturous grind to draw satisfaction from - during our test sessions, at least. Though, it should be said getting the most out of the Ritual Bar may require the sort of commitment rarely seen in an online slot. Numbers might help clarify this point better than words, no matter how poetic we try to express them. Triggering Candle Spins was no big deal; they have a theoretical frequency of 1 in 13. For Nolimit City, that's an oddly user-friendly stat. However, hold on to your tofu burgers, folks, because triggering Cursed Spins organically, according to the game sheet, is a 1 in 10,030 spins occurrence. Couple this stat with a modest for Nolimit City max win of 6,666 times the bet, and the whole deal might feel daunting to the point of being off-putting. Fair dues, it's hard to argue with that impression. It's not all doom, gloom, shadow and blood, though. Like Print Studios' slot Reapers, it might pay to view Cursed Spins as a happy accident rather than the be all end all outright goal, so maybe try and sit back to enjoy the ride. The good news is the ride is a pretty good one, with enough regularity to the hits and feature triggers to keep the game rolling, with a rich, handsomely presented occult environment to enjoy the flow in. It feels like Nolimit City may have had a different sort of gambler in mind when making Blood & Shadow when we compare it to some of the studio's recent work. When weighing everything up, Blood & Shadow is a unique slot, and while it might be trickier than usual to pinpoint the exact gambler taste this caters for, those enticed should be thrilled, or chilled, by the result.

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8.5

AboutSlots

Although Book of Shadows improved on an existing mechanic, its core wasn’t very innovative. However, we can ascertain that we’ve never seen something quite like this game. Removal of lower-paying symbols is not new per sé, but the mechanics that makes it possible and what happens along the way is brand-new. An underrated feature of the game is that it has payways instead of paylines. This is not too common on smaller grids like this. It removes the annoyance of “blockers”, a.k.a getting the best symbol on each reel but not having them in a line. It makes it more rewarding to remove bad symbols, as it really feels like your chances of making connections increase. Thematically, the game is bang on with its horror theme, continuing on the setting NoLimit created with Book of Shadows but improving on it. Blood & Shadow by NoLimit reintroduces the Shadow Girl on a brand-new stage with some very intriguing mechanics.

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8.2

Online-Slot.co.uk

Whilst the Blood & Shadow slot doesn’t offer the max win potential of Book of Shadows or other Nolimit City slots for that matter, features trigger regularly to keep you coming back in order to find eternal youth. With 6,666 x bet max wins, Nolimit City have gone for a different approach that’s well worth undertaking.

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9.0

Gamblington

The theme perfectly captures the creepy and frightening mood of an abandoned cathedral where the summoning of hellish demons occurs regularly. Filling the progress bar with the blood of the vanquished winning images fits right into that idea, as does the impeccable portrayal of mid and high symbols that work hand-in-hand during the respins. Blood & Shadow serves mountains of substance enveloped in an eerie horror theme offering engaging base game mechanics with a robust progressive foundation.

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9.0

OLBG

Enjoy this occult-themed slot with 1,024 paylines, a 6,666 x the bet max win and a 96.13% RTP. Ascend 5 levels in the Ritual Bar, transforming symbols, and enjoy 2 thrilling free spin rounds with enhanced winning potential.

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Highlights

No highlight clips available for this game yet. Visit our highlights library to see all videos.

Sticky Wilds

Live Streams

Top 10 Winners

Game Features

Reel Area & Ritual Bar

The reel setup is 4-4-4-4-4 rows across 5 reels with a Ritual bar at the bottom row. Winning combinations will be destroyed and remaining symbols will tumble down, allowing the new symbols to fall in. At the Ritual Bar, there are 5 levels of progression. The Ritual Bar resets for each level-up. Exceeding collects are carried over to the next level. - Level 1: 20 - Level 2: 30 - Level 3: 40 - Level 4: 60 - Level 5: 80 Landing the Scatter Symbols and winning combinations of medium and high paying symbols advances the Ritual Bar. - Medium paying symbol = +1 per winning symbol - High paying symbol = +2 per winning symbol - Scatter Symbol = +10 per Scatter symbol Each level removes the lowest paying symbol and also converts medium symbols to high paying symbols.

Candle Spins

Reaching a new level of the Ritual Bar awards +2 Candle Spins till level 4. +6 Freespins are awarded when advancing to Cursed Spins. Before any new level, any plausible wins pays out before progressing to the next level. During Candle Spins, the Ritual bar performs the same as in the base game.

Sticky Wild

Sticky Wilds can only land on reel 2-5. Candle Spins/ Cursed Spins: The Wild drops down to the bottom of the reel and becomes a sticky Wild, until it is part of the winning combination or a new bet is made.

xSplit

xSplit® will be activated during Cursed Spins. When an xSplit® lands it will either split the row or the reel. xSplit® can split any symbol, multiplying the symbol size by 2. Multiple xSplits® can land on the same row, but not on the same reel.

Baphomet Rite

Buying Baphomet Rite instantly progresses the Ritual bar to level 3 and awards +6 Candle Spins. 3 of the low and medium paying symbols are replaced with 3 high paying symbols.

Cursed Spins

+6 Freespins are awarded when entering Cursed Spins. Any potential wins have to be completed before entering Cursed Spins. The Ritual bar is removed and the reel area becomes a 5x5 reel with only high paying symbols. Landing a Scatter gives +1 freespin. Buying Cursed Spins awards you 10 freespins.

The Pact is Sealed

The max payout of the game is 6,666 times the base bet. When the total win exceeds this amount, the game round will end and 6,666 times the base bet is awarded.

Nolimit Bonus - Feature Buy Functionality

Buy you way straight into one of the different bonus features, ranging from 55-500 times the base bet.

The Nolimit Bonus feature may however be removed in some regulated markets.

Game xMechanics

xSplit®

xSplit® was first made available within xWays Hoarder xSplit, released in July 2021. On this first occasion, xSplit symbols go a long way towards assisting wins through the feature, as any xSplit symbols in view to the right of a Scatter symbol will turn the Scatter into a Super Scatter symbol – which within this release assists in progressing the feature through several levels. However, aside from the progression through bonus levels, xSplit as individual symbols increase win ways during base play. Any xSplit symbol in view will split all symbols to the left of it into two, increasing the ways to win. After this, the xSplit symbols will turn into wilds – for the potential of huge wins.