Dead Canary

What these figures mean for Dead Canary

Nolimit City states that the 65,000x maximum on Dead Canary lands once in 7,000,000 spins. Tombstone R.I.P. offers 300,000x — 4.6 times larger — and needs 130,000,000 spins to produce it, which is 18.6 times as many. Das xBoot asks for 64,000,000 and Misery Mining for 60,000,000. Only Fire in the Hole xBomb does better than this game, at 2,350,000 spins for a 60,000x ceiling. So among the six titles on this site with five-figure multipliers, Dead Canary has the second-best claim to meaning it, and the gap to the rest is an order of magnitude.

Seven million spins is still not a number any individual reaches. At a spin every six seconds it is about a year and four months of continuous play, which is to say nobody. But the comparison is what matters: a player who treats the maximum as the point of the exercise is, on these published figures, eighteen times better served here than on the game with the headline-grabbing 300,000x. The size of the headline runs opposite to the chance of collecting it, and these two games are the proof.

The rest of the specification is unremarkable for the studio, which is itself worth noting. The hit frequency is 26.2%, so something returns on roughly one spin in four — more often than Das xBoot at 22.17% and far more often than Tombstone R.I.P. at 9.08%. A 100x win arrives once in 903 spins, fourth-best here behind Das xBoot's 635, Karen Maneater's 755 and Mental's 831. The volatility index is 26.88, which is high — fourth in this catalogue — but then so is everything this studio makes.

What Nolimit City does not publish for this title is the split between base game and bonus. For most of its releases it does: 59.74% and 36.29% for Das xBoot, 58.04% and 37.98% for Deadwood, 55.59% and 40.41% for Karen Maneater. Here there is no such breakdown, so we cannot tell you how much of the 96.02% waits behind the feature, and with a free-spins round arriving on the studio's stated schedule that is the one number a player would use to judge whether the wait is worth sitting through. We are not going to infer it from the other games: the proportion varies from 36 to 40 points across the ones that do publish it, and a four-point range is too wide to guess inside.

The comparison with Karen Maneater is the one that puts this game's ceiling in proportion. That game tops out at 11,757x and reaches it once in 330,000 spins. This one tops out at 65,000x — five and a half times higher — and needs 7,000,000 spins, which is 21 times as many. So trading up from one ceiling to the other costs you a factor of 21 in probability to gain a factor of 5.5 in prize. Expressed as expected value from the maximum alone, the smaller ceiling is the better deal by roughly four to one, and that calculation is ours from the studio's two published figures rather than anything Nolimit City states. It is also the clearest illustration on this site of why a bigger number on the paytable is not a better bet.

There is a detail in the return figure worth a sentence. At 96.02% this is the lowest-returning Nolimit City game in this catalogue, by a margin of seven hundredths of a point from Das xBoot's 96.03%. It is also, within the group of six games on this site with ceilings above 50,000x, the lowest of the six. The trade that group makes — about a percentage point of return surrendered in exchange for a huge multiplier — is made slightly more aggressively here than anywhere else, and the compensation is the 7,000,000-spin figure rather than extra return. Whether that is the right exchange depends on something no specification can tell you: whether you are playing for the ceiling at all.

The summary: a five-figure maximum backed by odds that are merely absurd rather than astronomical, bought with the lowest return its studio offers here and a missing bonus split. If the top prize is genuinely why you are playing a high-volatility slot, the published numbers put this game and Fire in the Hole xBomb ahead of the rest — and they also say, in the same breath, that a year and four months of continuous spinning is what that top prize is worth.

What the studio publishes about the maths

Figures Nolimit City states for Dead Canary itself — not our estimates.

How Dead Canary compares with the rest of our catalogue

Against every other game here whose studio publishes its maths.

Volatility as the studio states it — what the index measures. Nolimit City lists this title as certified for UKGC.