The Wildos

The Wildos: Slot Overview

Swedish casino game maker Thunderkick has beaten a path westwards in a cowboy 'n bandits style online slot going by the name of The Wildos (not sure why we kept thinking 'The Weirdos', but that could make for a fun slot too). Not only are its face-masked main characters pretty 'wild' themselves, but the game also relies heavily on wild symbols to generate its biggest thrills. Keeping alive a strong Wild West slot tradition, The Wildos' central feature is its round of free spins where wilds are sticky and reveal multiplier values to help strengthen winning combination returns.

So yes, The Wildos might sound a little bit like NetEnt's iconic Western number Dead or Alive 2, and on the gameplay front, there are crossovers. Looks-wise, though, the two studios could hardly have taken more different approaches to the genre. Where Dead or Alive 2 went for grim realism, The Wildos is more light-heartedly cartoonish. Its makers have used a much brighter palette, and while the game is set in a classic dusty ol' frontier town, the focus is mainly on two buildings – the jailhouse and the bank. Handy for all parties involved, really, as the sheriff can take apprehended bank robbers right across the street to lock them up, and would-be bank robbers can scheme while taking in the view of the bank to feed their motivation. This appears to be what's happening in The Wildos' base game, where three bandana-face-covering baddies peer through bars, waiting to be released when the free spins round activates – helped by exploding cakes.

Resting between the bank and the jail is The Wildos's game grid. It possesses 5 reels, with each reel holding 3 rows and crossed by 15 paylines. Wins are created by landing three to five matching symbols along a payline, starting from the leftmost side across adjacent reels. In the default mode, betting 10 p/c to $/€100 per spin, the return to player value is 96.15%, rising to 96.44% if buying the free spins bonus round. Any device may be used to play The Wildos, which comes with a highly volatile math model to run the show.

Getting all symbolic now, The Wildos has ten pay symbols, which can be grouped into lows, mids, and highs. The lows are clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts; the mids are a shackled boot, a hat, and bottles, while the highs are three bandit character symbols. Hitting a five-of-a-kind winning line is worth 3x the bet for the card suits, 5-7x the bet for the mids, and 30-50 times the bet for the high pays.

The Wildos: Slot Features

Helping link winning lines together is the Multiplier Wild symbol. It can substitute any symbol except scatters and lands on the three central reels. All Multiplayer Wilds have values of x1-x5 which is applied to any line win that they are part of. When more than one wild is used in a win, the multiplier values are multiplied. So, an x4 Multiplier Wild and an x2 Multiplier Wild in the same win would produce a multiplier of x8. The maximum value possible is x125, made up of the three x5s.

Bonus Game

The Bonus Game is triggered when 3 dynamite cake scatter symbols land anywhere on the reels in the base game to award 8 free spins. During the Bonus Game, wilds are sticky when they hit, remaining in their position until the feature ends. On each spin, sticky wilds reveal a new random multiplier value. Moreover, when wild symbols land, they highlight one position on the meter below their reel. Each time a meter is filled, +3 free spins are awarded, up to a maximum of 9 additional free spins.

Lastly, if the Buy Feature button is there, players are able to buy the Bonus Game for the cost of 100 times the bet.

The Wildos: Slot Verdict

Westerns and sticky wild multipliers go together like petrol and fire, and with The Wildos Thunderkick has flicked another match on the fuel dump. Sticky wild multipliers are one of those gaming devices that have an inherent ability to brighten up a slot, and The Wildos was already a bright slot to begin with. Picking a cheerful way of presenting the Wild West gives The Wildos identity, helping it stick out from its competitors, which often tend to pour on the grim realism. Not saying one way is better than the other; both have their place. Just that using a cheerfully humorous angle helped The Wildos make a more memorable impression than it might have done otherwise.

The gaming is memorable, too, if a little on the unoriginal side by now. The repeat performance didn't dent The Wildos' enjoyment levels, though, and Thunderkick has included adjustments. We are talking about the way sticky wilds reveal random multipliers in free spins rather than stick to just one value for the bonus game's duration. A relatively minor tweak in some ways, and while it might not crush expectations of how the game functions, doing things this way throws a spanner in the works. And, as you might have guessed, getting a group of sticky wilds in place can be right old rootin'-tootin' time. The icing on the (dynamite-encrusted) cake is that multipliers multiply each other rather than add their values together before being applied, leading to nice results during the review. On a less enthusiastic note for some, perhaps, winning potential in The Wildos doesn't come anywhere close to the stratospheric figure of Dead or Alive 2, topping out instead at 6,250x the bet.

This lower total is probably affected by the way wilds are restricted to the middle three reels rather than given free rein to land anywhere. However, unless you're dead set on crossing paths with the absolute wildest Wild West slots on the planet, The Wildos' jovial atmosphere, coupled with what it can do with its sticky multiplier wild method, is more than capable of delivering hair-raising amusement.