San Quentin xWays Slot Demo & Review – Play for Free

Nolimit City is an established studio, known well for pushing boundaries with dark themes and complex math models. They hold licenses from the MGA and UKGC, which means all their games are certified for our market, backed by a WGCRB manufacturer’s license.

The game is all about what happens between the concrete walls of San Quentin State Prison, with hardened inmates acting as the main characters. These include Beefy Dick and Crazy Joe, who I imagine are plotting their big breakout. 

The base game starts on a 5x3 grid with 243 ways to win, but thanks to split wilds and Enhancer Cells, these rows expand vertically. The wins are paid from left to right on adjacent reels and calculated by multiplying the symbol value by the number of ways.

Reels, Rows, Paylines san quentin.png

The base RTP is 96.03%, but it actually increases if you use the Feature Buy tool, all the way up to a few decimals short of 97% for the 5-scatter buy. The volatility is extreme, which I’ve found means every session is either going to be a hit or a miss – no small, frequent wins carrying you through.

At Hollywoodbets, I can jump in for just 40c, but the max bet limit is way lower than I’m used to, with a ceiling of just R160. I imagine this is the operators’ way of enforcing responsible gambling and limiting player loss in light of the extreme volatility.

Betting Range san quentin

San Quentin’s 150,000x max win, up to R1.5 million, is one of the highest in the industry. Having played this game extensively now, I gather that the only way to achieve that is by triggering the Lockdown Spins and maxing out the Jumping Wild multipliers to 512x. 

• Bonus Guard Tower: One or two on any reel in the main game turn into wilds and open the Enhancer Cells on that reel. Three or more get you into the Lockdown Spins.
• Split Wild: These split all regular symbols on the same reel into two (it doesn’t split itself), doubling the positions and ways to win. 
• xWays: Lands in Enhancer Cells and reveals a stack of 4 matching regular symbols, which effectively increases the odds of multiple winning combos on one spin.

You’ll notice locked positions at the top and bottom of every reel – these are the enhancer cells. You trigger these in the base game with one or two Guard Towers on the same reel. 

Enhancer Cells

Once active, they reveal one of the five high-paying inmates, a Wild symbol, a Razor Split, or an xWays symbol. This is also the only way to expand the grid beyond the standard 243 ways in the base game.

The xWays mechanic is a staple of Nolimit City, and here it acts as a primary tool for reel expansion. When an xWays symbol is revealed in an enhancer cell, it will reveal a stack of four matching regular symbols. 

xWays

Let’s say you land an xWays symbol in both the top and bottom enhancer cells of a single reel – that entire reel becomes a stack of eight wild symbols (and increases your chance of a winning combo).

This feature splits all regular symbols on that reel into two. You can even quadruple the number of symbols on a reel if you manage to land a Razor Split in both the top and bottom cells of the same reel. 

If a Razor Split hits a reel containing a Jumping Wild during lockdown spins, it doubles that Wild's multiplier.

This bonus round is triggered when you land three, four, or five guard tower scatters. The number of scatters you land will determine how many jumping wilds you start with, not how many spins you get (which is usually the case). 
The number of spins is actually calculated as the sum of the values revealed in the opened enhancer cells. A random inmate symbol is also assigned a special multiplier for the duration of the feature.

Jumping Wilds only land during the Lockdown Spins, where they change positions with every spin. They start with a 1x multiplier, but this doubles every time they’re split with a  Razor (up to a max of 512x).