Wild Showdown

Wild Showdown: Slot Overview

Question, what do Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Game of Thrones, Invader Zim, Family Guy, GTA V, Red Dead Redemption (and others) have in common with Light & Wonder's online slot Wild Showdown? If you listen carefully, they all feature the Wilhelm scream at some point. The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect which has been used in hundreds of films, TV shows, games, and maybe other places since 1951. It was named after Private Wilhelm got shot in the leg with an arrow in a 1953 Western film called The Charge at Feather River. Adding to the long list of entertainment outlets that have used the sound effect is the Western-themed Wild Showdown.

Wild Showdown is a slot that spends its base and bonus game inside a dimly lit saloon-type room decorated in bottles, a rifle, a wanted poster, paintings, and colourful US fan flags. The sounds in Wild Showdown arguably outdo the visuals. A twangy guitar-led track is interspersed with 'yee haws', and the aforementioned Wilhelm screams before leaping into a track that brought to mind Dick Dale's Misirlou during the bonus round. Wild Showdown conjured up hot, dusty, bullet-ridden mental images of the West, provoking a solid level of interest to see what it might be cooking up next.

What is coming up are things like added wilds, sticky wilds, and multipliers on a 1,024 ways to win pay system. We'll get to those, but first, some numbers, such as the fact Wild Showdown comes with two RTP settings – 95.96% and 94.02%. Both versions are highly volatile, offering wagers of 20 p/c to $/€20 per spin. The Showdown occurs on a 5-reel, 4-row game panel, which is playable on tablet, mobile, or desktop devices.

Wins occur when three to five matching symbols sit on adjacent reels, beginning from the leftmost side. Normal pay tiles start with thickly Western fonted 9-A card royals, followed by bottles and glasses, gunslingers, saloon ladies, plus what look like sheriffs. Landing a five-symbol winning way is worth a payout of 0.4-0.6x for the low pays, 1-4x the bet for five premiums. Before heading into the features, normal star wild symbols can appear on all but the leftmost reel and substitute for any pay symbol.

Wild Showdown: Slot Features

Wild Showdown packs a couple of special symbols called a Multiplier Gun Chamber and a Wild Gun Chamber.

• The Multiplier Gun Chamber appears on reel 2 and acts as a wild. When it hits, the chamber spins to reveal a multiplier of x2-x10, which is applied to the value of any wins on the spin.
• The Wild Gun Chamber appears on reel 4 and also acts as a wild. At the end of the spin, the chamber on this symbol spins to reveal a number of 1-5. This number of wild symbols is then placed on the reels in random positions. Bear in mind only one of each Gun Chamber type can land on its respective reel at a time.

Free Spins

Landing a Bonus Safe symbol on the middle reel awards 8 free spins. If the Bonus symbol lands without any Gun Chamber symbols present on the triggering spin, it acts as a wild for the duration of free spins. If it lands with one or both Gun Chamber symbols, the Bonus symbol disappears during the first free spin and does not reappear during the bonus round. While the feature is going, if any of the Gun Chamber symbols land on a free spin, they lock in place and stay there for the remainder of the bonus round, awarding a multiplier and/or random wilds on each spin. Free spins cannot be retriggered.

Buy Pass

Clicking the Buy Pass button lets applicable players buy one of the three bonus round options. These are free spins with the Multiplier Gun Chamber for 96x the bet, free spins with the Wild Gun Chamber for 89x the bet, or free spins with both Gun Chambers for 450x the bet. When buying free spins, the triggering Bonus Safe symbol becomes a sticky wild for the full duration. Buying free spins has a theoretical return of 95.75% and 95.88%.

Wild Showdown: Slot Verdict

Wild Showdown was a bit of an up-and-down roller coaster to review. The game got off to a good start, thanks to an agreeable Wild West attitude and the way it's situated in what feels like a frontier spot that's seen pretty much everything there is to see. The initially buoyant mood took a slight hit due to a sluggish base game pace as if Wild Showdown wasn't really in the mood to get up and actually do much. The win-all-ways system was a plus, though, especially when Gun Chamber symbols (which are wild) started landing, and we began to see the game's possibilities.

Free spins were where it was at, and Wild Showdown provides a strong incentive to buy them rather than hit them organically. This is because the Bonus Safe symbol turns sticky during bought bonus rounds even with the added Gun Chamber symbols in place from the start. For example, buy the Multiplier Gun Chamber round, and you've got sticky wilds on reels 2 and 3 the whole time. Buy free spins with both Gun Chambers, and you've got sticky wilds on reels 2, 3, and 4. With 1,024 ways to win. Not saying buying free spins is guaranteed to end in a positive result, of course, but there's a psychological element, knowing you can essentially buy 8 win spins with a multiplier and added random wilds thrown in on top. Should the showdown go all the way, wins of up to 12,500x the bet are possible.

Wild Showdown is capable of producing exciting moments, yet it wasn’t as crazed as something like Dead or Alive 2, Tombstone RIP or Deadwood. One minute it felt like a gunslinger half asleep at the bar, the next, it has drawn pistols, shooting the joint to bits. It's not action-packed, 100 miles an hour all the time, but when the Gun Chamber symbols start hitting or doing their thing in free spins, the show can get pretty animated.