Dead Headz: Slot Overview

If the idea that bigger means better holds true, then the growing crowd of studios orbiting software provider Hacksaw Gaming says plenty about the developer’s clout and standing in the business. The newest name to step into that circle at the time of writing is Jinx Gaming—so fresh they don’t even have a website (yet). That leaves the game itself to do the talking: a brain-munching, zombie-themed online slot called Dead Headz, built around a distinctive Shoot & Loot feature where you destroy the shambling horde to stay alive.

Dead Headz leans hard into classic black-and-white horror-film atmosphere, with the game logo oozing fluids down one side of the screen. In the base game, you’re in a moonlit graveyard—pretty much the perfect setting for zombie harvesting. The bonus round, however, shifts gears in almost every respect. The palette stays mostly monochrome, but during the free spins phase the presentation turns more video game-like—think Days Gone, Dead Rising, World War Z, but done on a shoestring.

Before the bonus round arrives, Dead Headz runs on a 5×5 grid, with wins formed across 19 paylines. Using Hacksaw OpenRGS, players adjust their wager via the up/down arrows to pick a stake of $/€0.10 to $/€100 per spin, even if the usual satisfying doop-doop feedback is absent. With a 5 out of 5 rating, Dead Headz is highly volatile, and it delivers an RTP of 96.31%, or 94.34% on the lower configuration.

Line wins aren’t really the main attraction here, but they still matter: landing five matching 10-A card ranks pays 1x to 2x the bet, while five matching zombie symbols return 7.5x to 25x.

Dead Headz: Slot Features

During the base game, Dead Headz is driven by wild multipliers until free spins land, at which point the action shifts into Shoot & Loot mode, with a feature buy available.

Wild Multipliers

Wild symbols can appear on any reel and substitute for all paying symbols—limited to one per reel. When a wild contributes to a winning payline, it reveals a multiplier of x2 to x20, applied to any win that includes that wild multiplier. If multiple multipliers land in the same win, they are combined. Hitting 5 wilds on a payline awards 100x the bet.

Shoot & Loot Waves Bonus Game

The Shoot & Loot Waves bonus takes place on a 3-reel, 6-row playfield. Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters starts free spins with an x1, x5, or x10 starting multiplier across all three reels, respectively. Each wave (spin) begins with a gun cylinder that can land up to 3 bullets. Bullets landing on the left, middle, or right will shoot the nearest zombie on the leftmost, middle, or rightmost reel, respectively.

At the beginning of every wave, new zombies spawn at the rear of the screen and move forward 1 row if they are not shot. When zombies are shot, they apply a value to the counter above them. Blue zombies reveal a value that is added to the meter of the reel they occupy, while Green zombies reveal a value that is added to all three meters. Values can range from +1 to +20. Orange zombies multiply their reel value by x2 to x20, while Red zombies multiply all reels by x2 to x20. If a zombie reaches the player, the round ends. The three meter values are then summed, and that combined total is paid out.

Feature Buy

Dead Headz’s one and only feature buy is a free spins trigger costing 150x the bet to activate.

Dead Headz: Slot Verdict

As a first release from a brand-new studio, Dead Headz shows a decent amount of promise. Jinx Gaming has put together something that may not be the most impressive creature to crawl out of a studio, but it’s unusual enough to be worth checking out—mainly because of the bonus round. The base game in Dead Headz is fairly flat. Yes, it includes wild multipliers, and they do their job, but for a Hacksaw Gaming studio the main game feels about as exciting as doing the laundry, and it also can’t reach the 10,000x win cap.

The real action starts once Shoot & Loot is active. It can feel a bit sluggish, though. Even with Super Turbo switched on, it may still seem like wading through treacle at points. It can also be maddening to watch zombies inch closer while the cylinder refuses to drop bullets where you need them most. In those stretches, the Shoot & Loot bonus feels like a nightmare where you try to scream but nothing comes out—so the zombies keep advancing, the screen gets drenched in blood, and the round abruptly ends. But the reverse can happen too: bullets start raining, zombies get erased, and reel multipliers climb to wild levels thanks to additive and multiplicative boosts. In those moments, it’s like a three-dimensional, bullets-flying, fight-for-your-life take on Chaos Crew’s bonus round.

Dead Headz doesn’t make the same immediate impact as other new-studio debuts from, say, Shady Lady or Sneaky Slots. Still, it’s undeniably fresh, and for a debut Jinx Gaming shows a commendable willingness to get weird, which builds curiosity about what they’ll do next. It’s not a knockout, but it’s enough to suggest Jinx Gaming is comfortable pushing into odd, offbeat territory.