Dead Canary - A good 3rd game that's worth the effort, but not quite like Fire in the Hole

Bare with me, as this will be a "tl;dr"-post, but since this series is so "dear" to me, I wanted to share some insight and views of this game, which in all fairness isn't that bad, compared to the many other games. Here, I'll go through the various points why this game is worth the play, since I am this much into video slots, heh...

Quick intro - DC goes back to the roots
FitH, the first game of the miner-series from NLC, is a favorite video slot for me and a lot of the regular spinners out there, for many reasons. 1) Its vanilla game is superior to other high-end max win games. With 36 possible game positions (8 more than on Money Train 3), it offers nice winning chances, especially with Wild Mining. 2) Its free spin options costs reasonably low (even at high bet) compared to other video slots. 3) Wild Mining-feature, which makes the vanilla game solid and gives neat possibilities to land some major wins. 4) Quite often, you don't need to do many spins before you get a free spin feature. 5) The chance to get free spin feature-series, meaning that you can get 5+ free spin features within less than 100-200~ spins. 6) You are 100% guaranteed a certain amount back from the buy-ins (unlike in Hacksaw games where 0x is a common summary from a bonus). 7) One of the cheapest buy-in options for a high-end max win video slot. Cheapest buy-in = 60x + money back-guarantee is great. 7 nice reasons why FitH is just that good and liked by so many.

With Dead Canary, I was hoping that it would be somewhat similar to the first game, and to my surprise, it's not actually that bad. It's definitely better than Misery Mining (the 2nd game in the series), and while it doesn't reach up to the FitH for the total score, it's definitely a good game. However, there are some parts of the game that somehow makes the game frustrating from time to time. I'll go over some of the sections that are frustrating and/or unnecessary.

Smaller board = lesser win combination
The first and easiest thing to notice is the smaller game board on DC. With 21+4 spots, it's significantly smaller than FitH with its 36 spots (28 spots during free spins). Naturally, this doesn't give the biggest win combo's like you can see on FitH, but it's still a nice enough board. It's a bad thing, but they cover it up with often Wild Mining-hits. 

Canaries "blocking" the locked symbols
One immediate thing that I noticed during the free spins, is the fact that a canary quite often lands right in front of a locked symbol, meaning that symbol is not possible to unlock, even with a green bomb landing next to the canary. It's like saying "no major win this time for you". Ok, this is not a major problem or anything, but seeing that those locked symbols can hold a major value from time to time, it makes one wonder why NLC did it like that...

Slow spins when a third canary is visible behind the locked symbols = pointless
Not a thing that matters at all, but one can wonder why they added slow spins when you have 2 canaries and the third canary is visible behind locked symbols. You cannot get 4 canaries on the screen anyways (or can you, NLC?) Perhaps this was a slip from NLC? But yeah, just a curiosity matter this one and nothing that matters at all.

Golden Canary free spins = expensive and yet so useless
Probably the most useless, frustrating and sad thing about the game is the fact that there seems to be no massive and important difference between the regular vs. the golden canary free spin feature. The GC feature costs a massive 500x the bet, but it doesn't bring much more to the game other than the golden canary that collects poop values from all over the board, excluding the (unlocked) vault values on each spin. Yes, this feature also increases the monster win possibilities by a marginal %/value + it gives a slightly higher chance to get the rat, guy and beer mug, but that doesn't justify the free spin feature to cost a whopping 500x the bet. At least on both FitH and MM, the more costly buy-in features adds a significant meaning to the feature, which somewhat justifies the cost of those buy-ins. That's not the case for this game. There are 3 more factors that makes the 500x-version less appealing: 1) You more often get less or about 100x from the buy-in. 2) The fact that NLC have added the chance to get the golden canary feature during vanilla spins with a fair % makes it sort of pointless to opt for the 500x buy-in. I have spun less than 7500 spins on this game, and already I have about 11-12 golden canary features, which is a fair amount, considering how much it costs to buy-in. On FitH, I've spun about 100000 spins, plus-minus, and I've gotten 5x scatters on vanilla spins 2 times... At least for us mortal beings. 3) Keep in mind that during the regular free spins, you can get the beer mug. If placed next to any of the canaries, it'll upgrade 1 canary to a golden canary, and thus you get upgraded to the golden canary feature. But yeah, all in all, the golden canary buy-in option = expensive, but yet so useless, unfortunately.

Canary free spins = worth it
Regular free spins on the other hand is worth a try or three, to put it that way. 68x the bet is definitely a fair amount for the buy-in. It's only 8x more than the cheapest buy-in on FitH. And unlike on FitH, which doesn't have a direct upgrade, you can get an upgrade to the best buy-in with the cheapest buy-in on DC, so it's definitely worth a go to do buy-ins on this with the cheapest option. And yeah, there seems to be a money back-guarantee on DC as well, which of course is nice to see.

Wild Mining and great vanilla win chances
It cannot be stated enough, but the Wild Mining-feature (similar to the bomb-feature in Xboot and Evil Goblins) is a solid feature to have in these board-type video slots from NLC, if not the best feature they've created. That good it is. Take MM, which doesn't have Wild Mining, the vanilla game is pretty much useless in that game, unfortunately. Its game concept is promising, but it doesn't have anything that makes it fun nor interesting, making vanilla spins useless in MM. I've spun about 5000 spins, and my biggest vanilla win is less than 75x... In DC however, I've already landed a couple of 100x+ hits. It's also great seeing how many bombs/wilds the Wild Mining can add, which in return ups the multiplier value to a nice amount, which then gives you those big wins. 

Conclusion - It's definitely worth the play!
Looking at the negative things vs. the positive things, this game is definitely on my list of playable video slots. If FitH fails, I'll spin this one, to put it that way. The negative things in this game are things I can definitely live with. And just because of the Wild Mining, the vanilla spins on this slot is worth the while. In other words, with this slot, NLC now have another slot where vanilla spins are recommended. On the other hand, the 500x buy-in feature is not recommended. Sure, if you got the balance and if you want the best possible win chances, go ahead. It's your money anyways, heh. But yeah, us mortals who don't have affiliate deals to stick to, can also enjoy playing this game. So yeah, Dead Canary is definitely worth the play, both the vanilla game as well as the cheapest buy-in option, which makes one who's a fan of this series quite happy and satisfied. Is it worthy a 9 that BWB gave this game? Maybe not 9, but a high number, for sure. That good it is.

What are your thoughts and opinions about this video slot? Have you gotten any good wins yet, or? Are you also a fan of this series? Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions here! And I hope this reading was worth it, and if it was any good, perhaps I should do this with other (requested) games as well... Let me know, and also; have a goodie good 2023, you all! May you get more and higher big wins this year.