The Border Slot Demo & Review – Play for Free

Nolimit City (NLC) offers unique themes with intensive storylines – one of the main reasons I’m such a big fan. They hold licenses from the Malta Gaming Authority and the UK Gambling Commission, so each of their games is regulated for fairness. They’ve also won multiple industry accolades, including Game of the Year at various EGR and CasinoGrounds awards.

The backdrop resembles the US-Mexico border, where the story unfolds about dark cartel drama. The tension between patrol agents and cartel figures builds your adrenaline, while surveillance imagery and desert imagery complement the game's high volatility.

The Border is a 6-reel, 6-row video slot with 13 symbols. It utilises a cluster payout mechanic that pays for five or more matching symbols touching horizontally and/or vertically. After a win, the winning symbols are destroyed so new ones can drop into the grid and potentially lead to multiple wins on a single wager.

Reels, Rows, Paylines the border

The theoretical return to the player is 96.17%, but every feature you’re in control of affects that estimate slightly: 96.2% for Boosted xRIP, 96.32% for Mule Spins buy, and 96.03% for Coyote Spins buy. The volatility is officially rated extreme, so while long-term returns look promising, it takes a grind and some smart betting decisions to get there.

Betting caters to most players, with a small $0.20 entry point and max possible base bet of $100. The cost of your bets increases by 50% if you use the Boosted xRIP feature, though.

The simulated max payout is 44,288x the base bet. The round simply ends if you exceed that amount, which your statistical chance of doing is once in 44 million rounds. How? Most likely through the Coyote Spins bonus round, where win multipliers don’t reset between spins.

• xWays: These transform stacking symbols, which makes it easier to build or expand a massive cluster.
• xSplit: These land on reels 2 to 6 and slice through all symbols to their left, which doubles their size. After the split, the xSplit tile turns into a Wild.
• xNudge Cluster Wild: This Wild nudges up or down to cover more ground when it’s part of a win. It adds +1 to your win multiplier every time it nudges over a symbol.
• xBomb Wild: Also acts as a Wild and explodes away adjacent symbols to trigger a new cascade. Each explosion also adds +1 to your win multiplier, but only for the next set of falling symbols.
• Silver Dollar Scatter: 6 of these trigger the Mule Spins, and 7+ get you straight into the Coyote Spins.

For an extra 50% on my stake, I get a guaranteed scatter on the first reel every spin, which significantly increases my chances of triggering the big bonus rounds. But it’s a bit of a trade-off, because it also removes any payouts lower than my base bet.

6 scatters trigger this round with 10 spins. Two unique features apply here:

• Infectious xWays: When an xWays symbol is part of a win, it “infects” other cluster symbols on that same reel, which forces them to split into stacks of 2 or 4.
• Upgradable Action: The round upgrades to coyote spins if I land more scatters, adding 2 extra spins for each one I land.

Mule Spins

7+ scatters get you into the coyote spins with 12 or more spins, where unique features apply:
●    Grid-Wide Infection: xWays symbols here infect all cluster symbols on the entire 6x6 grid, not just their own reel, like the mule spins.
●    xBomb Multipliers: xBombs add their specific multiplier value to any symbol showing an “xX” that wasn't blasted away.
●    Persistent Multipliers: The win multiplier count never resets between spins, so it’s the only real path to hitting the 44,288x cap.

Coyote Spins the border