Get ready for a deep dive into a gloomy world of unresolved crimes, femme fatales and the hardboiled Detective, Tom Flint, who’s job it is to make sense of it all. NetEnt is a master when it comes to creating atmosphere, and the gritty voiceover that narrates you through this whodunnit slot sounds just like the voice from a classic 1940’s black and white noir movie. They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore, unfortunately.
Cash Noire will bring forth the detective in you for sure, and you’ll definitely want to dust off some old crime/mystery DVDs after playing this game. With a mysterious dame smoking in the shadows on the right-hand side, the reels come with a Crime Zone that keeps shifting position for each spin. This hotspot starts out covering 3 reel positions, but will expand one or two spots as you climb the Clue Bonus-meter you’ll see on the left-hand side of the reels.
Climbing all the way to the top is what you’re hoping for all along, as this will trigger the City Map Chase bonus round. This is far from an easy feat, and we basically had to give up after going 200 spins above our usual 200 spins test run. Read all about that further down in the review, and be aware that the low to medium volatility feels a bit misleading for this game. It plays out more like a high volatility game, although bigger wins above 500x your stake is extremely rare here. It’s just a mystery to us, more so than the game itself, why NetEnt would mess things up like this with what could have been a great addition to the genre.
There is plenty going on in almost every base game spin here, so you’ll hardly have a quiet moment while you wait to trigger the elaborate bonus round. We’ll start with the most basic bonus features first, and work our way down the list.
First of all, this is a Cascading (or Avalanche) engine game, just like so many others from the developer that first invented this feature. You’ll see a lot of cascading wins almost on every spin here, and winning symbols are hit by flying daggers and removed. This leaves room for new potential winning symbols to drop from above, and the process goes on as long as you keep winning.
On every spin you’ll see a red marker that frames 3 random reel positions. This is called the Crime Zone feature, and the red frame jumps around the reels on each spin, and it can also morph into different configurations. On the left-hand side of the reels you’ll see a Clue List bonusmeter, and as you make your way up this meter you can also expand the Crime Zone with up to 2 reel positions. You advance up the bonus meter by landing winning symbols inside the Crime Zone, and getting all the way to the top triggers the bonus round.
Sometimes you’ll land a vault symbol on the reels, and this will turn random regular symbols into matching symbols whenever it lands outside of the Crime Zone. If the mystery vault lands inside the Crime Zone however, it will clone itself to fill the whole Crime Zone frame. This can lead to decent payouts, and also be of great help when it comes to filling the Clue List meter. The Clue List meter will reset on any non-winning spin.
As mentioned above, you need to climb all the way to the top of the Clue Meter to trigger the free spins feature. That means you need to activate 13 clues by landing 13 winning symbols inside the Crime Zone. To make things a bit easier for you, the Crime Zone will expand to 4 and 5 reel positions after 3 and 7 clues have been highlighted on the meter, respectively.
When all 13 clues in the meter are lit up, you get 5 free spins to start with. The expanded 5-reel-positions Crime Zone will still move around randomly during the free spins, and now you’ll see a City Chase Map with a progressive multiplier that starts at 1x. Similar to the base game, any winning symbols in the Crime Zone will take you further down the city map. The difference is that this meter does not reset on losing spins.
For every 7 locations on the map you manage to highlight, the progressive multiplier will increase by +1. You will also get 2 extra spins every time the car reaches 13 locations. You close the case by reaching the final destination on the map, and this rewards you with a 10x multiplier and 3 extra free spins.
Despite being a murder mystery slot, the gameplay is not really as complicated as it might sound. We will walk you through everything you need to know here, and especially new players should probably pay attention. If you’ve played a lot of online slots before, you might not need to read this part and you can skip to the next section.
Cash Noire from Netent comes with 5 reels, 4 rows and 1,024 ways to win, which is a fairly classic setup for a video slot. One of the innovative things that make the game stand out is the voiceover narrator. This raspy male voice has some interesting remarks, and helps set the dark and gloomy mood for the game. You don’t need this voice to play however, and you can turn it off in the settings if you want. You can also turn on/off subtitles for the voice there, as well as turn on quick spins to increase the pace.
The hamburger menu opens up the game setting menu discussed above, as well as the paytable and game rules. The paytable explains all about the features, and the visual illustrations in there might be useful to check out. You can also get an overview of all the symbol values, and the dynamic paytable will update itself according to your chosen bet level.
Speaking of, it’s now time to choose your total stake between 20p and £200, and this is done via the up and down arrows. The volume can be adjusted seamlessly within the game, which is a good thing, and you can also set up the autoplay feature with between 10 and 1,000 autospins. That’s pretty much it, you are now ready to solve the murder mystery and close the case with a big smashing win.
Since you know so much about how to play this game, it’s only fair that you should know equally as much about where you can play Cash Noire slot. This is exactly what we will assist you with here, but you first have to make a choice. Do you want to go for the real money action right away, or do you prefer to test the free demo game first? The good news is that we can help you out right here no matter what the answer is.
If you know your way around the online casino world, you will have no problem getting started for real right off the bat. The NetEnt game interface is probably well-known to you from before, and you can easily get into the gameplay in no-time. We just happen to scan all the casinos on the market on a regular basis here, which gives you the best possible overview of where to play and which welcome bonus to go for. Simply follow the link to the top of this page, and you can choose from hundreds of casinos andplay Cash Noire slot with a sweet welcome offer.
If you are a new player, or if you just feel a bit uncertain if this game is for you, then you can always check out the free demo version of Cash Noire first. This way you don’t risk anything from your own pocket before you know for sure, and you have all the time in the world to get familiar with the gameplay without any pressure. We have the demo version installed right here on this page. Just follow the link to the top, and you canget started with Cash Noire free demo play immediately.
We are big fans of the film noir genre, having watched most of the classics from the 1940s and 50s, like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity and Shadow of a Doubt to name a few of the most well-known. When NetEnt announced a brand new game with the title Cash Noire, we therefore had our hopes up from the get-go. Here’s how it went with our 200 spins test run on this gloomy and somber title.
We set the bet level to £1 per spin, and loaded in 250 autospins in the autoplay feature. The quick spin feature was turned on, but you still have to click the screen (or the space button) to shorten all the animations. This is a problem, because you tend to get a lot of cascading wins here, but they usually don’t amount to much in terms of winnings.
After a while, this becomes somewhat tiresome, as you just want the spin to go on so you can trigger the bonus round. We had plenty of close calls in that regard, and it’s really frustrating to get almost to the top of the Clue Meter, just to have to start all over again. Our biggest base game win was around 10x our stake, which is not very impressive, and triggering the bonus round seemed all but impossible.
This is supposed to be a low to medium volatile slot, but after 200 spins we had lost £70, and had yet to see the bonus round a single time. We had no choice but to power through some “overtime” spins, just to see if the bonus round was possible to trigger at all. After around 200 extra spins (above our regular 200) we gave up. The biggest mystery to us is how you can call this low to medium volatility, as 400 spins would trigger the bonus round at least 2 times on most other games.
The gritty atmosphere and the visuals are top notch in this game, but we expect nothing less from NetEnt. However, you might find yourself bouncing cheeky remarks off of the narrator’s comments when he says stuff like “it’s all falling into place”, just as the Crime Zone and Clue Meter is reset for the nth time. This is the major problem with this game, in addition to the measly base game payouts.
Landing 3 scatters (which is how most games trigger the bonus round) benefits from the “illusion” that it can happen at any time. Climbing the Cash Noire Clue Meter however, seems more and more impossible as you keep failing at it. This frustration, combined with annoyingly small base game wins from lengthy cascades, is not a good way to condition players to want more. The math model might say one thing, but Cash Noire feels more like a high variance slot with a lousy max win potential than anything else.
Pros
Cons
There are plenty of games out there telling a detective or crime story, but few of them come with the gutsy realism Cash Noire slot has to offer. This is not enough to carry the game however, but we’ll suggest some similar slots you can check out below. Follow the link to read more about each game, and you can also play the free demo version if you want.
Narcos- is NetEnt’s branded effort based around the cult TV series by the same name. It comes with explosive bonus features where the bullets are literally flying, and the cartoonish visuals will remind you of Grand Theft Auto. The Drive-by feature and the bonus round with walking wilds are the highlights here, and you can win up to 1,506x your stake.
Holmes and the Stolen Stones- is Yggdrasil’s masterpeice based around the legendary detective and his loyal crime-solving companion. It comes with 5 local progressive jackpots, an exciting Warehouse bonus game and a free spins round where you’ll benefit from a 3x win multiplier. Solve the mystery and win big on this charming medium variance title.
Jack Hammer- might be an oldie, but it’s definitely a goodie. This classic gumshoe slot from NetEnt is far better than the game at hand in our view, and it comes with a 3,000x max win potential which is rock solid for a low volatility game. The sticky respins feature defines the base game, and you’ll benefit from them in the exciting bonus round also.
Cash Noire
