5 Wild Wolves

5 Wild Wolves: Slot Overview

Love 'em or hate 'em, jackpot prizes are a classic online slot feature that has been around for, like, ever, and are likely to be gracing, or cursing, slots long into the foreseeable future. Casino game maker 4ThePlayer has come up with a jackpot variant it has named Boosting Fortunes, which has already seen action in games such as 4K Ultra Gold. This system grows prizes up to a set limit and sits alongside expanding symbols in 5 Wild Wolves, an online slot which counts 5 Wild Buffalo/5 Wild Buffalo 2 as its spiritual predecessors.

With touches of Native American culture, 5 Wild Wolves is located in a North American setting at night while a fire blazes and a shooting star nips across the sky. The atmosphere is similar to that of the 5 Wild Buffalo games, except the background is all mountainous instead of desert-y. 5 Wild Wolves also has less of a 'casino' feel to it since the prize wheel has been removed and is no longer used, though a list of five jackpot prizes sits in its place to the left of the reels. The rest of 5 Wild Wolves has that chunky, bold, colourful appearance fans have come to know, appreciate, and who knows, maybe even love, from 4ThePlayer by now.

A ways game, 5 Wild Wolves' 5x4 gaming area comes shipped with 1,024 ways to win, forming winning combinations from the grid's leftmost side across adjacent reels. Rumbling in the background like a wolf about to howl is a highly volatile math model with a theoretical RTP of 96%, where gamblers may stake from a minimum of 20 c to a maximum of $/€90.

The hierarchy of symbols includes 10-A royals, racoons, owls, horses, cougars, bears, and wolf pay symbols. Royal wins, 5 OAK in size, pay 0.15x the bet, rising to 0.2x-0.25x for landing 5 matching animal symbols across the reels. When appear on any reel except the leftmost. They're able to replace any regular paying symbol.

5 Wild Wolves: Slot Features

4ThePlayer has used the opportunity to bring back its Boosting Fortunes feature, which is a set of progressive (to a point) jackpot prizes. Other extras include Wolf Stack Multipliers, Howling Free Spins, and feature buys.

Boosting Fortunes

There are five dynamic jackpots in 5 Wild Wolves. They are the Mini (8x-100x), Midi (12x-200x), Super (100x-500x), Mega (300x-1,500x) and Ultra (1,000x-5,000x). Landing a Gold Coin on a symbol or a wild in free spins increases one or more Fortune Prizes up to its set limit. On any bet, where one or more Gold Coins land on a symbol, the Fortune Bonus may trigger. When activated, players pick objects to reveal a Fortune Prize token. When 3 of the same tokens have been revealed, the corresponding prize is awarded.

Wolf Stack Multipliers

Wolf symbols can land at any time as regular or fully stacked symbols. Landing a fully stacked wolf symbol triggers the Wolf Stack Multiplier feature. Above each reel is a Wolf Stack Multiplier, which changes on every spin, displaying values of 3x to 25x. A fully stacked wolf symbol gets the multiplier from above that reel, which is used to indicate how many wolf symbols are on that reel during the win evaluation. When fully stacked wolf symbols are adjacent, they merge into one and multiply each symbol's multiplier value. The maximum number of wolf symbols that can appear on all reels is 42,000x.

Howling Free Spins

In the base game, landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters awards 8, 15, or 25 free spins, respectively. In the feature, wild symbols that land expand to fill the reel and come with a Wild Stack Multiplier of 2x to 20x. The Wolf Stack Multiplier above the reel is added to the Wild Stack Multiplier. This new total Wild Stack Multiplier is used to calculate how many symbols are on the reel during win evaluations. Players win +4 free spins when 2 scatters land on the reels.

Feature Buy

The feature buy has two choices - Howling Free Spins for 50x, or a spin that guarantees a wolf win with at least 1 full stack of wolf symbols for 100x the bet.

5 Wild Wolves: Slot Verdict

In some ways, 5 Wild Wolves was like visiting, let's say, Vietnam and walking around with a million dong in your wallet but only being able to afford a bottle of water and a decent meal to go with it. Due to the way adjacent wolf symbols multiply their Wolf Stack Multiplier values when they combine, the resulting merged value could be enormous but often lead to oddly modest payouts. The reason for this is the low pay symbol values and the way it appears only one wolf symbol can land per reel, so if it doesn't expand and get a multi, a single 1x1 wolf symbol is of limited use. This doesn't mean every time the Wolf Stack Multiplier feature occurs, it's going to be disappointing, though. Far from it if luck is running white hot. As the rules state, the maximum number of wolf symbols on the reels equates to 42,000 which comes out at 10,500x the bet. Not bad for a single spin.

The Wolf Stack Multiplier feature actually ended up eclipsing the Boosting Fortunes element, which took a back seat to landing wolf symbols and hoping they'll expand. Wolf Spins, in particular, were the most exciting part of the demo, as they cut straight to the chase of landing wolf symbols, combining them quite frequently into a juicy merged multiplier and counting up the result. Boosting Fortunes, well, they're there, a pleasant sweetener for players who enjoy jackpots that can grow and pick 'n' click features when they happen to trigger.

To sum up, players who warmed to 5 Wild Buffalo should be just as warm to this wolfish offshoot as it is close in function. There must be a decent number of fans, too, since 4ThePlayer has put in the effort to evolve the 5 Wild theme and features. If the previous buffalo games didn't win you over, 5 Wild Wolves probably won't either, but there is good stuff here for players partial to the previous 5 Wild Buffalo slots.