Play Mental For Real Prizes
Released in 2021, Mental is a landmark slot, no doubt about it. It’s highly likely you either love it, hate it, or simply don’t understand it. It comes from Nolimit City studio, famed for pushing boundaries and incredibly complex, highly volatile titles. After this, the studio would go on to successes with the likes of Das Boot and Tombstone R.I.P.
The theme in Mental is horror movie-esque, heavily borrowing from The Silence of the Lambs. Players step into a blood-tinged mental asylum, with dramatic, chilling music wailing away in the background. Slot symbols are a combination of body parts and patients. It’s not the kind of thing you’ll want to play right before bed.
Once you start spinning you’ll be assaulted by the sheer volume of things happening on screen, and it will take even the most hardcore players a while to get a feel for the flow. Luckily, you can use this here page to get to know all the bonus symbols and features.
To sum up the basic gameplay, you’re playing on an irregular grid with 13 squares, and the aim is to create lines of 3 or more base symbols in an all ways pays fashion. Fire Frames hit randomly to split symbols in two and create more chances to win, and Dead Patients can come back from the dead bearing multipliers. For all the rest of the rules, we suggest you read on.
Pros
- One of the most impressive and mind-boggling slots ever produced
- Insanely immersive theme
- The base game is super engaging and the free spins kick it up another notch
- Plenty of buy the bonus options
- High RTP, volatility and max win
Cons
- Incredibly complex - takes a while to wrap your head around the rules
- Things can move so fast it’s hard to keep track of what just happened
- The theme may well be too dark for some players
Gameplay
How To Play
- Choose your bet size and start spinning.
- In the base game, the aim is to land 3 or more Patient/Organ symbols to create all ways pays lines from left to right. Many special features affect play – they’re all detailed in the Bonus Features section below.
- The key to winning big in the base game is unlocking multipliers via the Dead Patient feature.
- There are 3 types of bonus round: Autopsy, Lobotomy, and Mental free spins. You can spin into or buy into any of these. They are also detailed below in Bonus Features. The key to winning big in the free spins, once again, is unlocking multipliers via the Dead Patient feature.
Bonus Symbols
- Dead Patient: Dead Patient symbols can randomly transform from a gravestone to a Patient, assuming there are at least 2 Patient symbols already on the grid. One of the following multipliers will be attached: 5x, 10x, 15x, 30x, 50x, 100x, 200x, 500x, 1,000x, 9999x.
- xWays: Reveals 3 symbols (any symbol except Scorpion, Spider, and Dead Patient) of the same kind and expands the reel height. If there’s more than 1 xWays symbol, they all reveal the same symbol.
- xSplit: Splits 1 symbol into 2 on each reel and splits itself into a Wild.
- Wild: Regular Wild symbol that can substitute for base symbols to form paylines.
- xNudge Wild: Always nudges to be fully visible on its reel. With each nudge, its multiplier goes up by 1.
Bonus Features
- Fire Frames: In the base game, 1-13 squares randomly set on fire and split into two squares to help create more winning lines.
- Enhancer Cells: These 2 extra squares are located at the bottom of reels 2 and 4 and can be unlocked on every spin. To do so, you need to land 4 and 6 Fire Frames respectively. Once unlocked they can show a Patient symbol, Dead Patient symbol, Wild, xWays, xSplit, or xNudge Wild.
- Mental Transform: Landing a Spider symbol on reels 2 and 4 can unlock a Patient symbol, Dead Patient symbol, Wild, xWays, or xSplit.
- Autopsy free spins: Landing 3 Scorpion symbols in the base game awards 8 Autopsy free spins, and each Scorpion with a Fire Frame awards 1 extra free spin. In this feature, up to 5 squares get Fire Frames that become sticky for the duration of the round. Landing 1 Spider symbol upgrades the round to Lobotomy and awards 1 free spin. Landing 2 Spider symbols upgrades the round to Mental and awards 2 free spins.
- Lobotomy free spins: Landing 3 Scorpion symbols and 1 Spider symbol in the base game awards 9 Lobotomy free spins, and each Scorpion/Spider with a Fire Frame awards 1 extra free spin. In this feature, you get the Autopsy benefits, plus Spider symbols become sticky and can trigger the Mental Transform feature on each spin. Also, each Dead Patient symbol has its highest multipliers ‘banked’ along with a count, and then shared out again when the same Patient symbols hit for the remainder of the round, decrementing by 1 each time. Landing 1 Spider symbol upgrades the round to Mental and awards 1 free spin.
- Mental free spins: Landing 3 Scorpion symbols and 2 Spider symbols in the base game awards 10 Mental free spins, and each Scorpion/Spider with a Fire Frame awards 1 extra free spin. In this feature, you get the Lobotomy benefits, but both Spider symbols become sticky and can trigger the Mental Transform feature on each spin. Also, multipliers shared out to Patient symbols do not decrement the count, so they keep building up throughout the round, regardless of getting used.
- Max win: 66,666x with a 1 in 18 million spins probability.
- Hit frequency: 34.19%.
- Free spins frequency: 1 in 216 spins.
SweepsPlays Verdict
- No other studio has attention to detail like Nolimit City. There’s so much going on in Mental, and each minor aspect has been thought through. For example, the grid has 13 squares, and you just know that’s intentional considering the theme. Also the max win is 66,666x.
- This was the slot when the studio really stamped its mark on the modern slots industry, with plenty of players sitting up and paying attention from this point on.
- The RTP, volatility and max win are all high, especially the latter.
- The key to winning big is landing multipliers via the Dead Patient feature, but each bonus feature has its place and can contribute directly and/or trigger a chain reaction. For example, hitting a good amount of Fire Frames opens up the Enhancer Cells, which will then show a symbol that can help form a win etc.
- If you understand all the rules of this game, congratulations – you should wear that as a badge of honor. And once you lock in, things move so thick and fast, it’s an exhillirating experience, especially in the free spins.
