The Wild Wood Slot Review

Get back to nature and breathe in the fresh air, when you start a game of The Wild Wood, an enchanting 5-reel slot machine that brings nature indoors. Watch as badgers and foxes playfully dance about the screen, all the while bringing in extra money for you to spend.

Boasting a double whammy scatter symbol, this title appears to have enough features on hand to entertain you for an evening, but will that hold up after a couple of games? Let’s find out right now.

Knock on Wood

Good luck is bound to make an appearance when playing this slot machine – you’re surrounded by a virtual wood, that you can knock on and touch whenever you want. Surely that has to count for something!

And then there’s the rustic colours of the design itself; the aesthetics have been carefully created to deliver a believable woodland scene. The graphics used are by no means realistic, but they have a virtual reality feel (albeit it in a 2D design) that helps bring the game to life.

Most of the colours seem muted, more subtle, and then there’s the bright orange of the title dominating the layout and drawing the eye. In truth, it’s a little distracting, but the colour scheme complements the rest of the screen, and so the boldness is easily accepted.

By the Light of the Crescent Moon

Full moons get all the glory, but what about the half moons, the barely there ones? They’re just as beautiful when we spy them in the sky. Though it’s doubtful any are quite as stunning as the one we see in The Wild Wood: the scatter moon has two functions, which try to fill the void left by the lack of bonus game.

• Wild Transformation: This job is likely the one you’ll come across first, for it happens in the main body of the activity rather than the free spins. When several of the tiles are matched, some of the icons will become wild, which in turn can double your winnings.
• Extra Spins: The basic job here is to gift you 16 free games; there’s still the function of the scatter becoming the wild though.

As you can see, the scatter symbol isn’t that impressive up close, but it’s innovation still manages to spice up those reels.

If You Go down to the Woods Today

The surprise is money, lots of it, sometimes as much as €400,000! The windfall comes from the wild symbol, which is the logo of the game, whilst the second biggest victory comes from the fox and badger icons, priced at as much as €60,000. These are the top shelf values – if your bet is the lowest it can be, you won’t ever see totals like this.

In regards to the lesser valued icons, they come in the form of card values, a Novomatic design characteristic that you come to expect if you’re a regular player with the brand. Despite their dull, lifeless appearance, their rewards can be reasonable, meaning they shouldn’t be overlooked due to the aesthetics employed.

Venturing Outdoors

Going in for the kill, placing that first bet, can be a nervous process, but the brand has got your back with a no fuss control panel that helps put you at ease. Basically the strip usually seen at the bottom of the screen has been cast aside, replaced by a translucent couple of buttons on the right hand side. This is where you can spin, autoplay, and open the settings to place a bet.

Betting begins at just €4 per winline, of which the lines are fixed into place. This total can then climb until it becomes €1,000 per line. A max bet option can be found to take you to that mark, should you have the funds, but if not you can utilise the up and down arrows.

To access the autospins, you need to hold the spin button down until it turns blue, which is when a pop up will appear and ask for some details: the number of rounds you want to play, and so on. It’s more thorough than other titles from Novomatic, but it also makes the gameplay more tedious – it puts the brakes on your experience.

The Wild Wood Lives On

No amount of urban development will shake away the charm and back to basics nature of this game, but there’s no escaping that it lacks substance when players need it most. A very average game from Novomatic, though its looks make it appear more high-end than what it actually is.