The Border

The Border: Slot Overview

Imagine a utopia where there are no walls, no barriers, no passports, no visas; nothing stopping the free flow of humanity from travelling, moving for work, sightseeing, or learning about new cultures. Now scrap all that flower power stuff and come back to the world of Nolimit City, which tends to be a lot grimmer – or realistic, depending on your point of view. Either way, here's another online slot to add to the grim list. It's named The Border, and the game's tagline sets the tone – 'Hope can only get you so far.'

Aside from the Korean Demilitarized Zone (external link), one of the most famous borders on the planet has to be the one separating the United States of America and Mexico (external link). Running for around 3,145 km, it is, according to Wikipedia, it is 'the most frequently crossed international boundary in the world', with 350 million legal crossings in a year. This is not to mention the number of illegal crossings, which is why hundreds of miles of physical barriers have been erected to help stem the flow. Needless to say, the border creates huge emotional responses, and it's this that players tap into via The Border online slot.

Not all of the border between the USA and Mexico is actually fenced. Some of it is made of natural boundaries, such as the Rio Grande river, winding its way innocently between the two countries. Forget all that when you're playing The Border. The setting for this game is a heavily guarded spot, with heavy metal sheeting and barbed wire erected to keep people in or out. It's weighty stuff, but Nolimit City has included a few things to lighten the load, giving the game a similar mood to San Quentin xWays. There's also a hint at underlying themes like authority, control, and obedience. Or is that just our imagination?

Played on a 6x6 game board, The Border is a cluster paying grid slot, which creates wins when five or more identical symbols are connected vertically and/or horizontally. It may come as no surprise, being a Nolimit City slot and all, that volatility has been rated as 'extreme' by the developer. The RTP, meanwhile, comes in several forms, from a maximum of 96.17%, dropping to 94.07% or 92.15%, depending on region and settings. Any device can host the game, where players pick stakes of 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin. Or there may be an option of engaging the Boosted xRip, which increases the cost of the stake by 50%, to guarantee a scatter symbol on the first reel. Keep in mind, when xRip is active, players do not get any payouts for winnings less than the base bet.

When a winning cluster hits, it is removed from the board, allowing new symbols to collapse in and fill the gaps. If a new win clusters up after the symbols collapse, the feature triggers again, ending when no new win appears. The Border supplies 8 symbols to form clusters with. From lowest value to highest, we find scorpions, snakes, vultures, and five different character symbols. Landing a baseline 5-of-a-kind cluster pays 0.2 to 1 times the bet, while the most valuable 160+ sized clusters pay 553.85 to 2214 times the stake. Those are pretty big clusters for a 6x6 grid, right? Let's see how they are possibly achievable.

The Border: Slot Features

The Border is armed to the teeth with features such as cascades, xWays, xSplit, xBomb Wilds, Mule Spins, Coyote Spins, xCluster, xNudge Cluster Wilds, and bonus buys. On an aside, wilds, no matter their form, are able to substitute for any regular pay symbol.

Features

• xWays symbols transform into 2 or 4 instances of a regular pay symbol. If more than one xWays symbol lands, all xWays symbols transform into the same pay symbol. xWays land as two full-size symbols or four half-size symbols to help connect more adjacent symbols.
• xSplits are present on reels 2 to 6 and split all symbols to the left of them, doubling the symbols (including scatters), then converting itself into a wild. If more than one xSplit lands on the same row, already split symbols get an xMultilpier value of up to x64, indicating the symbol count.
• xNudge Cluster Wilds can nudge up and down if they are part of a winning cluster. For each symbol it nudges over, the win multiplier increases by +1. If the symbol has an xMultilpier value, then the win multiplier increases by that value. If an xNudge Cluster Wild is split by an xSplit, it starts by adding its own multiplier to the win multiplier.
• When xBomb Wilds explode, they remove all adjacent symbols except xNudge symbols or scatters, and the win multiplier increases by +1 for the next collapse. If the xBomb Wild is split, it increases the win multiplier for the next collapse by the number it gets split into.
• xClusters only appear in free spins, and 2 or more unique clusters of symbols in the same avalanche triggers xCluster, which increases the win multiplier by +1 for each unique symbol cluster from the second one.

Free Spins

• Landing 6 scatters triggers 10 Mule Spins. When xWays is part of a winning cluster, cluster symbols on the same reel are infected before the xSplit, or xNudge activate. xWays reveals 2 or 4 symbols, infecting other symbols to split into 2 or 4 symbols, respectively. Hitting additional scatter symbols upgrades the feature to Coyote Spins, awarding +2 spins per scatter.
• Landing 7 scatter symbols triggers 12 Coyote Spins, plus 2 extra spins for each additional scatter in view. xWays symbols may infect cluster symbols as before, but this time all cluster symbols are infected. Also, xBombs add their multiplier value to all symbols displaying an xMultilpier that are not exploded. xBombs without a multiplier add +1. During Coyote Spins, the win multiplier does not reset between spins.

Nolimit City Bonus

Where available, pressing the star icon opens up the Nolimit City Bonus menu. For 98x the bet, players can buy Mule Free Spins (RTP 96.32% ) or 914x the bet to buy Coyote Spins (RTP 96.03%). The third option is the Lucky Dip, costing 506x the bet and provides a 50/50 chance of winning Mule Spins or Coyote Spins (RTP 96.05%).

The Border: Slot Verdict

The Border is classic Nolimit City from start to finish. From a theme that most competitors wouldn't dare touch to stacking the screen with copious features which mix and mingle like tequila and salt. The Border is a hard-as-nails game, though, which is kind of to be expected, or as Nolimit City has put it in their typically irreverent fashion – 'Don't underestimate the power of this wall - Most end up being the vulture's evening feed.' Few studios would get away with producing something like that or have the cajones to even entertain the thought of doing so. The good news is Nolimit City isn't just being edgily non-conformist to grab headlines or trigger lols. Their games are generally a reflection of the studio's bold attitude and go places where few dare to tread as a result.

The Border is another example of this tendency and is jam-packed with features. We noted the absence of any xMechanics in the previous game Road Rage, and here they are back with an absolute vengeance, splitting, nudging, bombing, waying, multiplying, and a million and one other things, getting up to all sorts of mischief. As a first 'real cluster game' The Border has got stacks to offer fans of this style they might not have seen before. Well, they might have seen some of what happens in The Border in previous Nolimit City releases, but not in conjunction with a cluster-paying system. Unsurprisingly, the action can be a little complicated at first, a little overwhelming, yet a thorough play-through should help iron out crinkles to help understand what's going on. Like other Nolimit City high flyers getting the right splits on, the right xWaying, a decent cluster, with a solid win multiplier can lead to crazy single spin results. The Border isn't one of the studio's record-breakers, yet it still pays out as much as 44,288x the bet at most. If anyone has any clues about what, if anything, that number refers to, please comment down below, as they say on YouTube.

After Road Rage threw us a curveball, we're back on solid ground with The Border, a vintage Nolimit City release that conjured a mental image of the studio holding up a middle finger to the establishment while feeding coins into a slot they've labelled 'unwinnable'. The Border isn't unwinnable as such, though it can be tough going, and presumably, like charging a border, it can lead to glory or metaphorical vulture chow.