After enjoying the success of Dead Man’s Trail, Relax Gaming are back with a follow-up game; Dead Riders Trail. While the first game was themed around pirates, high seas and treasure hunting, Dead Riders Trail slot takes a completely different form – set in the present day, with a gang of mobsters trying to forcefully steal “loot” from law enforcement.
Interestingly, the game also has a very different base game; unlike the standard 5-reel, 3-row format we see in Dead Man’s Trail, the sequel uses a very similar mechanic to the one we saw in Temple Tumble Megaways. The game is played out on a 6×6 game grid, and it’s an all-ways-pays mechanic. This means you simply need to land three or more matching symbols on adjacent reels from left to right.
The max win of the game is a whopping 50,000x, and a hit frequency of 24.61% ensures you don’t have to worry too much about length losing periods. Naturally, the game is classified as being very volatile. We were pleased to see that Relax Gaming has chosen to release it with just one RTP setting; 96.20%. You can experience the action from £0.10 up to £20 per spin at some of the new bingo sites listed on our website.
The purpose of this review is to give you an idea of what you can expect when playing the game for yourself. Firstly, we’ll cover the game’s theme and layout – later, looking at the different bonuses and features inside.
Dead Riders Trail Slot: Theme, Design, and Layout
We think it’s fair to say that the designers of the game have used GTA as quite strong inspiration – and you’ll see this GTA theme throughout the gameplay. They also appear to have borrowed elements from Nolimit City’s design work – but it’s unique enough, and it looks great.
As noted earlier, the gameplay takes place on a 6×6 grid. Every spin, a different number of spaces are ‘free’. When you form a win, the blocks around the winning symbols are destroyed, and new symbols drop down to take their place – infinity spins, as some would call it.
Special Symbols, Bonus Features, and Gameplay
The game uses two different symbols in the base game; the low-value symbols are represented by playing card suits; hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades. These don’t pay much, awarding between 0.4 and 0.8x your stake for matching a 6-of-a-kind combo.
The high-value symbols in the game are four different characters and a logo, which pay up to 2x your stake for a 6-of-a-kind combo. Of course, it’s possible to “stack” symbols many ways, which is where the base game win potential is found.
There is also a wild symbol which appears on reels 2 through six. This substitutes for all other symbols in the game.
Dead Riders Trail Slot: Bonus Features
Entry to the bonus round is triggered in the same way as we saw in Temple Tumble Megaways; you need to completely clear the game grid of empty blocks. Once you do so, you will be awarded one spin on the feature wheel.
There are three segments that the wheel can land on; bonus trail, super bonus trail, and free spins (the first two are similar to the features found in Money Train 2). If you’re awarded the free spins (up to nine) you’ll simply enjoy a number of free games played out on the standard game grid. However, special bomb symbols are added to the reels. When a win is formed adjacent to one of these bombs, all symbols on the same reel as the bomb will transform into the same symbols. It’s also possible to get more than one bomb in view, allowing – potentially – you to land a full screen of symbols!
While the free spins bonus round can be profitable, it’s undoubtedly the bonus trail most players will want to trigger. During this feature, you’ll get to work your way around a trail, collecting cash prizes and rewards as you go. There are many special tiles which can trigger things like persistent snipers (increasing the values of random positions) and collects – which collects all the values on the screen. You keep working your way around the trail until you run out of gas, at which point the bonus round lands.
Now, sometimes, when you trigger the wheel bonus round, you will notice that the “Super Trail Bonus” appears. When this is the case, and if you land on this segment, you’ll notice that all of the silver trucks are replaced by gold trucks. This means that when you land on one of the special symbols, it’s guaranteed to produce a persistent feature rather than one of the basic ones.
If the wheel lands on the free spins, you are also given the chance to gamble your free spins to try and win the trail bonus. If you wish to do this, you will be shown the exact odds before pressing the gamble button – a nice touch, in our opinion.
Conclusion
While Dead Riders Trail slot contains many similarities to Dead Man’s Trail, we feel the game developer has done a fantastic job in making sure there’s enough differences to make it unique. Firstly, the base game is completely different, relying on a “win-all-ways” mechanic rather than conventional paylines. If you like the mechanic found in Temple Tumble Megaways, there’s a good chance you’ll really like what this new slot has to offer.
We also like the fact that players are able to trigger a super bonus, without needing to buy it for a cost of thousands of times their stake. With many game developers like Nolimit City releasing bonus buys costing hundreds – or even thousands – of times your stake, it feels almost impossible to land these super bonuses naturally. While the super bonus in Dead Riders Trail isn’t easy to land, it does appear – and when it does, you can almost guarantee you’re going to get a nice payout.
We also really like that there’s a free spins bonus round – although it can be pretty frustrating when you gamble the free spins to try and get the trail bonus and lose. On the whole, however, Relax Gaming has done an excellent job here – and we’re not surprised to see it already catching on with players.
If you have the bankroll and like volatile games, then make sure you try Quickspin’s Beastwood and Nolimit City’s The Border for your chance to end up with some awesome windfalls.
