The popularity of video slots created by Swedish developer, Nolimit City, represents one of the great success stories of the online gambling industry in recent years. 

Since building their first games in 2016, Nolimit City have grown rapidly, propelled by a series of extreme volatility games with adult themes and high payout potential. After catching the eye of Evolution Gaming, a sale was agreed last August. The deal was reportedly worth 200 million Euros, with a further 140 million Euros to be paid dependent on performance over the next 3 years. 

So how did Nolimit City achieve such massive success in such a relatively short period, and can they maintain their winning streak? We assessed their game output from past and present to answer those questions. 

The Thrill of Alternative, Adult-Themed Games

The first think you need to know about Nolimit City, if you don’t already, is that there is nowhere that they won’t go with the themes and narratives on their games. 

In a recent interview with online-slot.co.uk, Per Lindheimer, Head of Product at Nolimit City, said, ‘The slot industry is for 18+ for a reason, so why can’t the themes also be more towards the more mature and controversial side?’

And the developer clearly doesn’t talk about that philosophy lightly. Other studios might flirt with the idea of adult themes, but Nolimit City dives right in. And the gambling world has stood up and paid attention.

Their collection includes a ton of real horror games (no tongue-in-cheek stuff) like Mental, set in a lunatic asylum and creepy as hell, Serial, a game about a murderer called the Bodycam Butcher, and Tombstone RIP, a western with a difference where the main characters get hung by the gallows, of course.

There are also games about dance and drug culture (The Rave, featuring bug-eyed kids), drug and people smuggling (The Border), haunted woods (Book of Shadows) and Soviet Labour Camps (Remember Gulag).

No one else has ever created slots like these and before we even get onto the crazy payouts and maths models, it should be said that one of the key drivers to Nolimit City’s success is that the themes and narratives of their games are always fascinating, entertaining and exciting.

Super High Maximum Wins 

The idea of slot games with maximum wins of 100,000x or more was not one that many studios entertained until recently. But the industry has changed in the last decade with new studios looking for ways to build a following and a new generation of players entering the arena. These new players have had their interest partly piqued by slots streamers who live-stream their gameplay on platforms like Twitch. These streams are only interesting when the gambling is high risk and the rewards potentially huge. 

Looking to cater to this market, studios like Nolimit City have built slots with bigger potential than came before. So now we have games like Tombstone RIP (300,000x your stake top payout), San Quentin xWays (150,000x top payout) and Folsom Prison (75,000x top payout). 

Right now, the chance to win £300,000 from a £1 stake makes Tombstone RIP the highest paying non-progressive jackpot slot on the market. And with a headline figure like that, it’s no wonder slots fans are queuing up to have a crack at unlocking the games riches.

Extreme Volatility

Hand in hand with the high maximum wins in Nolimit City slots has come extreme high variance. Variance, or volatility, refers to the distribution of wins in the games. Typically, high variance games produce short bursts of high value wins between long spells with little or no return. For this reason, they are high risk and it is possible to burn through a lot of cash chasing down that big win sequence the player craves. 

But that is one of the reasons Nolimit City slots are so popular. When they do deliver, they deliver big time, and those 100s of dead spins all seem worth it. Check out any number of San Quentin xWays big win videos on YouTube to see what we mean.

Innovative Features

What would exciting payouts and variance be without the thrill of great gameplay and features? Not much, of course.

Whilst Nolimit City may have started slowly, the quality of their output improved significantly from 2019 onwards and that can partly be attributed to the development of several game features including xNudge, xWays and xBomb. 

xNudge, whose first outings included games like Hot Nudge and Tombstone, has since been used in many Nolimit City releases including Deadwood and El Paso Gunfight. In these games, stacked wilds that land may nudge up or down until they feel the entire visible reel, increasing a multiplier value with each nudge. Effectively, these turn a standard wild reel into a progressive multiplier wild reel, with the potential to enhance all winlines converging with the wild. 

xWays is another clever Nolimit City trick which opens up many extra paylines by turning one symbol into a stack of the same symbol. You’ll find this in games like Punk Rocker and San Quentin xWays again.

Also a favourite is the xBomb feature, seen in Fire in the Hole from 2021. It’s triggered by landing xBomb Wilds which explode wherever they land, taking out all adjacent symbols so new ones can drop in like a standard cascade. In conjunction with progressive multipliers these can be very effective ways of building big win sequences, and the drama of the explosion adds to the excitement in typical Nolimit City style. 

All these features, plus their xPays and xSplits make these slots stand out a mile from the crowd and have added to their popularity.

How Do Nolimit City Look Under Their New Ownership?

Bringing all these points together, what makes Nolimit City slots so popular is a basic truth and that is, they are so much fun to play. They are full of clever, unpredictable and exciting features, unusual themes, and all with the chance to win massive prizes. 

The big question is, now that Nolimit City are under new ownership, will the great run of form continue? There is always the risk when a new owner comes in that they want things done differently. Perhaps in this case, more mainstream and less risky. 

Well, if the output since August 2022 is anything to go by, there will be no such drop off in quality here. For example, one of the first games to be released under Evolution famously depicted the morning after the party held to celebrate the deal. The Hangover movie-style Walk of Shame, was no less entertaining or dynamic than anything that came before, though players did notice that the variance had been dialled down to medium. 

Since then we have had an underground fight club game, The Cage, with a top win of 25,000x and high variance, the gunslingers of Bounty Hunters, with a 52,310x top win and extreme volatility, and the greed-fuelled Gluttony, with a top win of 32,000x and more extreme volatility.

In conclusion, with those games under their belts, it would seem that the future continues to look bright for one of the gambling industry’s most exciting and innovative software developers, as well as their growing legion of fans.

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