Beheaded: Slot Overview

Shipwrecks, eh? There are plenty of reasons you’d rather never end up in one. One particularly grim version of that disaster unfolds in software provider Nolimit City’s online slot Beheaded. After this ship sinks, a lone survivor washes up on a tropical island, but there’s no relaxing in a hammock with coconut juice and a bamboo straw while waiting to be saved. Instead, Beheaded’s shadows hide a soul-devouring Tzantza collector. Not ideal. It’s the classic case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire, and players get a dose of life-or-death intensity as Beheaded shows off its ‘Insane’ volatility.

To clarify, a ‘tzantza’—in case you were curious—is a shrunken head, historically used as a trophy, for trade, for rituals, or other purposes by different peoples in different parts of the world. So no, Beheaded isn’t played for laughs. It’s a bleak, ominous setting where danger feels close at all times. The game also branches off from Nolimit City’s slot Blood & Shadow, a release that sparked polarising reactions among some gamblers. In that sense, Blood & Shadow can act as a rough indicator of how you might feel about Beheaded as well. Not completely, though, because the gameplay in the two titles isn’t identical.

What does carry over is the 10 out of 10, ‘Insane’, ‘Extreme’ volatility. Beheaded is not the kind of slot you casually stroll through while eating an ice cream, as you’d expect. The maximum RTP sits at 95.99%-96.03% when staking 20 c to $/€100 per spin, or 96%-96.04% when using the xBet. Activating xBet doubles the stake, and makes it three times more likely to trigger Tzantza Spins – it always starts at Level 1. Beheaded uses 4 rows of symbols across a 5-reel grid, offering up to 178 connected ways to win. Winning combinations, along with the symbols beneath them on each reel, drop away so fresh symbols can fall into place.

Beheaded’s lowest-paying symbols are bony 10-A card royals, returning 0.15 to 0.75 times the bet for 5 OAK. Next come 5 head/skull medium symbols, paying 0.9-1.5x for five-of-a-kind, followed by 5 blue, glowing high-pay heads/skull worth up to 3 to 9 times the bet. Wilds can appear on any reel and substitute for all regular paying symbols.

Beheaded: Slot Features

The first key mechanic to understand in Beheaded is the Progression bar. It features 5 levels of progression. The bar resets each time you level up, while any extra collections beyond the requirement carry over. Dropping wild, high, or medium pay symbols moves the Progression bar forward: Level 1 – 15, Level 2 – 25, Level 3 – 50, Level 4 – 80, Level 5 – 110. A wild symbol counts as +3 per winning symbol, high pays add +2 per winning symbol, and medium pays add +1 per winning symbol. Each level converts medium pay symbols into high pay symbols.

Hitting 3 dropped scatter symbols moves the player into Tzantza Spins, granting +6 spins. For every level skipped, players receive +2 free spins. The Progression bar resets at the start of each new game round.

Soul Wilds

There are 3 Soul Wilds, each with its own Soul Collectors that collect the Souls from dropped high-pay symbols after a win. The Soul Wild feature unlocks in this order:

• Level 1 – Happy Soul Wild, requires a total of 4 souls to be activated.
• Level 3 – Sad Soul Wild, requires a total of 10 souls to be activated.
• Level 5 – Angry Soul Wild, requires a total of 18 souls to be activated.

Soul Wilds are only activated when no more Souls can be collected and the collector has been filled. The number of triggered Soul Wilds determines the size of the Wild Zone – 1×1, 2×2, or 3×3, and multiplies the general multiplier by 1, 2, or 3, respectively. After this happens, the general multiplier resets. Any scatters that land inside Wild Zones award +1 free spin each. The Soul Wilds Collector is reset if it fails to collect enough Souls or once it activates, until the next spin.

Ayahuasca Spins

Reaching a new Progression bar level grants +2 free spins up to level 4, or +6 free spins when you advance into Tzantza Spins. By contrast, buying Ayahuasca Spins instantly progresses the Progression bar to level 3 and awards +6 Ayahuasca Spins. Three of the medium pay symbols are replaced with 3 high pay symbols.

Tzantza Spins

Buying Tzantza Spins instantly progresses the Progression bar to level 5 and awards +10 Tzantza Spins. All medium-paying symbols are replaced with high-pay symbols.

Pick A Potion

If Tzantza Spins finish without achieving the max win, players are offered 2 choices. The Butterfly Bottle guarantees a payout of 5 to 8,000 times the base bet. The Skull Bottle instead risks the built-up win for a chance of winning the max win or losing it all. The larger the accumulated win, the better the chance of landing the max win.

Nolimit Bonus

This time there aren’t many options—besides the xBet, Beheaded’s Nolimit Bonus includes the following:

• 6 Ayahuasca Spins – 100x the bet. RTP 96%-06.03%.
• 10 Tzantza Spins – 500x the bet. RTP 95.94%-96.08%.
• Lucky Draw – 225x the bet. RTP 95.99%-96.17%.

Beheaded: Slot Verdict

Nolimit City started 2024 in strong form, releasing heavy hitters like Fire in the Hole 2, Brick Snake 2000, Loner, and more. Beheaded is undeniably smart, but at times it felt like it dragged the overall quality—or at least the average enjoyment—down a notch. The biggest issue early on was that it simply didn’t feel as entertaining as several other releases this year. Beheaded also brought back vivid memories of Blood & Shadow—not exactly pleasant ones, more like unsettling ones—although it improved over time as it became clearer how everything worked. No mistake: Beheaded is a slot that seems determined to tear the head off anyone bold enough to challenge it, boil the noggin in a huge pot, shrink it down, then add the trophy to a growing collection it has managed to pry from the gambling community.

Exaggerating? A bit—though not entirely—because Beheaded is perfectly comfortable living in the harsher end of the online slot spectrum. Here, the theme and the mechanics line up neatly. As with Blood & Shadow, naturally climbing into the higher levels isn’t exactly a simple mission and can even feel frustrating if players get stuck repeating the same cycle, like a treadmill set to the wrong speed. It may be worth thinking about using the xBet when playing Beheaded. Yes, it costs double the stake, but during testing the entertainment value felt like it increased by more than 2x. Part of that was because standard spins could feel quite dry for long stretches. Collections didn’t appear to build quickly, and major features seemed relatively rare, creating a clear gap between xBet off and xBet on.

Of course, big things can happen in any mode, and maybe patience pays off regardless of how someone approaches Beheaded. Or maybe it doesn’t. Knowing the features well helps, since you’ll have a better idea of what’s likely to happen. At its best, you’re looking at a satisfying mix of mechanics like symbol drops, oversized wilds, collections, free spins, and a win multiplier, with payouts reaching up to 15,950x the bet. Do you risk your winnings for a shot at max win when Tzantza Spins end, or take the Butterfly Bottle’s guaranteed win? For clarity, any Butterfly Bottle winnings are added to what you already collected during the free spins round, making it the much ‘safer’ option. So while the max win frequency looks fairly decent on paper, this gamble choice is still going to wipe out plenty of players.

As is typical for Nolimit City, Beheaded is packed with inventive ideas, leans into confrontational subject matter, and delivers a lot of sharp design in its gameplay. It took more effort to warm to than many of Nolimit City’s earlier releases, but some gamblers will enjoy the test Beheaded puts in front of them and relish the chance to take a few (virtual) heads themselves.