Wild Outlaws is a six-gun-shootin’ online slot machine developed by software developer Light & Wonder; yee haw, y’all! It’s possible that the moniker “Wild Outlaws” is intended to be boastful; after all, it suggests a group of lawbreakers who run amok on the frontier, rob stagecoaches, open fire in saloons, and generally cause chaos. Now that you know, let’s go check out Wild Outlaws and see what kind of Western adventure the folks at Light & Wonder have concocted.
I won’t lie and claim I was blown away by what I saw at first. There is an absurd abundance of Wild West slot machines, with it seemingly being added to by the dozens every month. While a casual viewer of Wild Outlaws could be fooled into thinking otherwise, Light & Wonder are no strangers to the wild frontier. The graphics are dated, the typical one-horse village has no distinct style, and the game has a hard time capturing the spirit of adventure gaming. But the tunes are quite cool.
Wild Outlaws is played on a 6-reel game panel; each reel carries 4 symbols, equipping players with 4,096 opportunities to win (we’ll get back to the sound and graphics in a second). With a preset theoretical return value of 96%, this medium-high volatility machine pays out when at least three matching symbols land left to right, beginning with the first reel. When you get on the saddle, you’ll choose a wager between 20 pence and ten pounds or euros every spin, as well as whether to use the Gamble option and the Premium Play mode. You’ll find descriptions of both of those things below.
If you get six of the boots, caps, skulls, or bags of gold, you win 1.5 to 10 times your wager, but if you get six of the metallic 9-A card royals, you get 0.4 to 1 times your stake. Wild Wanted Poster symbols can appear on reels 2, 3, 4, or 5, and the Wild Revolver Bonus can add them to reels 1 and 6 as well. Wilds are interchangeable with regular pay symbols.
Featured Slots: Wild Outlaws
When 2 scatter symbols appear on the reels, the Wild Revolver Bonus is activated (although not always). When triggered, the feature causes the scatters to become wild symbols and fires between three and five bullet holes onto the game grid, all of which become wilds.
Bonus Spins at No Cost
When you get three Bonus symbols, you get ten free spins. Each Bonus icon spins to reveal a number between one and six. The sum of the numbers is used to calculate the amount of free games. During the bonus round, the panel above reels 2-5 expands to include an extra set of four locked places. After a win is calculated, if a wild appears on reels 2 through 5, a copy of that symbol will shift to the top of the reel and remain there as a sticky wild for the duration of the feature. If a wild symbol shifts to a higher position on a reel when there is already a sticky wild, the sticky wild receives a multiplier. The multiplier is equal to the amount of sticky wilds on the reel. The Wild Revolver Bonus might activate with the appearance of just 2 Bonus symbols. Alternatively, the amount of extra free spins is determined by the scatters spinning when 3 Bonus symbols appear.
Superior Gameplay
When the Premium Play setting is activated, the initial wager is doubled. The Sheriff Bonus is activated when a win exceeds 1.6x the Premium Play stake. Players select one of 12 Sheriff badges that show on the screen to reveal a multiplier of x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, or free spins. If you’ve been given a number of free games to spin the reels, you’ll be taken back to the main menu of the game.
Game of Chance
When the Gamble button is on, every win of 5x or more of the initial wager will activate the Gamble feature. With Premium Play enabled, the Gamble bonus is activated at a stake multiplier of 2.5 times the Premium Play bet. Gamble can either double the current win or award free spins. Up to a predetermined maximum, a player can alter their wager, take their winnings, or continue playing. There is a cap of 30 free games and a maximum payout of 10,000x the wager.
Final Say on Wild Outlaws Slots
Is it possible to be an outlaw without also being wild? Similarly, does being wild imply being an outlaw? Maybe we were thinking of Wittgenstein’s language games, but it’s only one of the many mysteries that surfaced while we evaluated Wild Outlaws. The question of when exactly this game was developed also emerged. Again, perhaps, but dammit if it doesn’t seem antiquated, and as is frequently the case, it’s impossible to tell if the studio aimed for a vintage appearance on purpose or not. Wild Outlaws might have been released a long time before Wild Showdown, the previous Light & Wonder Western slot we evaluated, but who knows.
A pity, because there are some novel ideas being proposed. The Premium Play feature is fascinating, because it may be activated without any really large winnings. If you’re lucky enough to win more than 1.6 times your wager, you may be eligible for a multiplier or free games, both of which happened during the review. The Gamble option, which appears after each victory of 5x the initial wager or above, is also enticing because of the low barrier to entry it presents. If you want to wager your winnings or exchange them for free spins, Big Time Gaming’s Win Exchange normally activates at a multiplier of 25x. Both studios’ approaches have their strengths, and Wild Outlaws’ style of doing things seems like it might appeal to certain gamblers despite the fact that their target audiences are different.
Wild Outlaws’ outer wrapping and lack of strong personality are the deal breakers, even though the rest of the qualities aren’t horrible in and of itself. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. Wild Outlaws’ positive qualities may have been more noticeable if the game had more personality, a bit more vigor, or didn’t appear so old.