Wild West Ways: Slot Review and Free Play Demo

Wild West Ways Review

Wizard Games have quickly established themselves as a studio that isn’t afraid to lead the way in mainstream online slot gaming, and we’re once again happy to take a look at one of their releases. This time, it’s called Wild West Ways, and its base game takes place on a classic 5x3 field with 243 ways to win. Honestly, it reminded us quite a lot of Quickspin’s Sticky Bandits, though that game came out way back in 2017.

Visually, the Wild West Ways slot is a very polished package, but its Wild West theme is by no means original. One gets the feeling that we’re getting to the point when we’ll have almost as many Wild West slots as Egyptian slots, but, fortunately, we’re not quite there yet. Still, if you’re a bit bored of gunslingers and everything like that, there’s nothing for you here.

From the mathematical point of view, the Wild West Ways slot is a medium volatility affair with a very solid max win of 5,000x. Its hit frequency is 22.54%, and you can dive into the action for stakes between £0.20 and £100 per spin. Like most Wizard Games slots, even Wild West Ways comes with RTP ranges, and its available RTP values are 91.06%, 94.01% and 96.10%. Here, we’d like to recall that Quickspin’s Sticky Bandits comes with a higher 96.58% RTP and that it doesn’t even have any other RTP versions, but that’s how the online slot gaming scene has changed since 2017 – the RTPs are lower on average and there are more games with RTP ranges than ever before.

Wild West Ways Slot – Reels Screen

Wild West Ways Slot Features

The dynamic paytable of the Wild West Ways slot features as many as 10 pay symbols, which are divided into three clear-cut categories. First, there are 4 low pays with card ranks that pay up to 1x your bet per combination. Then, there are 3 mid pays with tequilas, skulls and bags full of coins, which pay up to 2x your bet per combination. Finally, there are 3 high pays with characters symbols that can net you up to 3.75x your bet for a set.

In addition to pay symbols, you can also land Wilds, Scatters and Blanks. Wilds can substitute for pay symbols in winning combos, Scatters trigger the Free Spins feature, and Blanks work as blocker symbols that contribute nothing at all.

Wild West Ways Slot – Free Spins Feature

At any point of the base game, you can randomly get to the Sticky Respins feature for a total of 3 respins after a win. The symbols that created the win remain Sticky for those respins, and you can land only new symbols of that type and Blanks as they go on. In other words, you’ll get a chance to boost your payout.

Finding 3, 4, or 5 Scatter symbols triggers the Free Spins feature with 7, 10, or 15 free spins, respectively. Before the feature starts, the game randomly selects one of the pay symbols, and only symbols of that kind plus all 3 specials will be kept on the reels. Each Scatter symbol that you land will add 2 extra free spins to your tally, and getting 3 will remove all Scatters from the reels. In exchange, though, you’ll get an extra row added to the playing board, so you’ll be playing with a 5x4 setup instead of the basic 5x3 one. Overall, then, it’s way more imaginative than just having Sticky Wilds like in Sticky Bandits.

Last but not least, there are 3 special bet options that you can take advantage of. First, there’s the Boost feature that you can activate at any point and increase your chances of triggering the Free Spins feature in exchange for a 1.25x increase in the bet size. Then, there are also 2 Buy Bonus options. For 85x your bet, you can get right to the Free Spins feature with 7, 10, or 15 free spins. For 155x your bet, meanwhile, you can get to the Free Spins feature with the Sticky symbol chosen only from mid pays and high pays.

Review Summary

Alright, so what do we think about the Wild West Ways slot? Well, there’s no doubt that it’s yet another excellent effort from Wizard Games, and it’s also one that we’d recommend over an older game like Sticky Bandits. It’s a more polished package overall, and its gameplay combination that focuses on Sticky symbols is way more imaginative than the classic bits with Sticky Wilds that the Sticky Bandits slot offers. Just make sure to find the Wild West Ways slot with its top RTP before diving in – the other versions just aren’t worth it!