Wanted Wildz Extreme

Wanted Wildz Extreme: Slot Overview

Wild heavy Western slots have proven their worth over the years, with NetEnt's Dead or Alive 2 arguably the MacDaddy of them all. Around the mid to tail end of 2022, Red Tiger compadres Max Win Gaming laid down a gauntlet with the release of Wanted Wildz, a game which could produce some serious sticky multiplier wild action during its free spins bonus round. Wanted Wildz didn't manage to push DoA2 off the top spot, lacking the same level of firepower, but Max Win Gaming is back, and it has tightened the screws to come up with Wanted Wildz Extreme. For the most part, Wanted Wildz Extreme does indeed live up to its name, being a more formidable slot than the original. If you'd care to find out how, then it's Stetson time, y'all.

For one thing, the theme has had a major reboot. Where the original served a traditional Wild West scene, Wanted Wildz Extreme has cyberpunk overtones, as if the Wild West took place in Shinjuku rather than the United States of America. Futuristic Wild West is no new thing, turning up in movies like Cowboys vs Aliens, series like Firefly, and slots such as Lucksome's 6 in the Chamber. The two different genres make for an entertaining synthesis, and Max Win Gaming has brought both together in an enticing mix of dust and neon.

As before, Wanted Wildz Extreme is a highly volatile online slot, though its RTP has risen to a default value of 96.21%. That is the value when wagering 20 c to $/€4 per spin, rising further to 96.25% when buying features, of which there are two to choose from. Technically capable of producing hails of bullets, Wanted Wildz Extreme is nevertheless an uncomplicated slot in most regards, played on a standard 5x3, 20 payline gaming setup.

Line wins occur when matching symbols hit from the left side of the grid on consecutive reels. Western fonted 9-A card ranks are the low pays, giving players 1.5 to 2 times their stake when 5 OAK wins appear, or 5 to 25 times the bet for landing 5 boots, hats, bitcoins, or badges. The skeletal chap from the first game returns on the wild symbol, present on all reels. As well as substituting all normal pay symbols, the wild pays out 100x the bet for a 5-wild hit.

Wanted Wildz Extreme: Slot Features

Wanted Wildz Extreme's features shouldn't require too much mental input to get a handle on. They include the Random Wilds Multiplier, free spins, and bonus buys.

Random Wilds Multiplier

This feature triggers at random in the base game. When activated, for the current spin, wilds multiply any winning lines they are part of by x2, x5, x25, or x100. If more than one wild participates in a winning line, the wild multiplier values do not accumulate. The total multiplier value is always equal to the current multiplier level shown on the Wild Multiplier Ladder, no matter how many wild symbols participate in a single winning line.

Free Spins

Getting 3 or more scatters triggers the free spins bonus round. When wild symbols hit, they are locked in position for the entire round. Wilds multiply any winning lines they are in by x2, x5, x25, or x100, depending on the Wild Multiplier Ladder value. Each scatter that lands is collected on the ladder, activating higher multiplier values when certain levels are reached. The round starts with 5 free spins, and +5 free spins are awarded each time a new level is reached – the new higher multiplier values apply in the retriggered batch of free spins. In addition, hitting 3 or more scatters awards +5 free spins on the current level.

Buy Feature

Wanted Wildz Extreme has two buy features, both costing 100 times the bet. The first choice is a regular round of free spins, while the second choice is 10 spins, where the Random Wilds Multiplier is guaranteed to trigger on each spin.

Wanted Wildz Extreme: Slot Verdict

First off, there is a lot to like about Wanted Wildz Extreme. It's not a game that trips over itself trying to be ultra-innovative, but its features are interesting while possessing the ability to be highly effective. Part of the progression from Wanted Wilds to Wanted Wildz Extreme is its thematic makeover, which has worked like a charm. Max Win Gaming has crafted a neat futuristic Western for its skeleton cowboy to run amok in. To put it into terms gamblers should be familiar with, the shift from Wanted Wildz to Wanted Wildz Extreme is similar to Money Train's regular Western world transforming into the Steampunk environs of Money Train 2. It makes you wonder about the way fashions come in, float out, morph, and become something else, and it's not hard to visualise a world like Wanted Wildz Extreme, a sort of William Gibson's Neuromancer on the frontier free for all, fighting it out for cryptocurrency rather than bars of gold.

Moving beyond the absorbing visual revamp, Wanted Wildz Extreme's gameplay has remained more or less faithful to the previous release, with little in the way of mechanical upgrades to bear in mind. Actually, the new bits mainly consist of the two feature buys, which should please buyers of bonus rounds. The rest is basically the same – wait till the Random Wilds Multiplier feature triggers in the base game for some possible multiplicative action or free spins for potentially even more multiplicative action. Like before, the way wild multipliers do not multiply or add to each other when more than one wild participates in a win might initially seem about as fun as wearing assless chaps on a cold day. But even though you get just the one multiplier value, no matter how many wilds are involved, Wanted Wildz Extreme comes with a sizable win cap of 25,000x the bet (compared to 15,000x before).

So there are good things to uncover here for sure, yet Wanted Wildz Extreme isn't without one or two warts. We touched on the biggest downer, the non-accumulating properties of the wild multipliers, but in addition, the reel-spinning action felt strangely undramatic, especially in turbo mode (if available), and the count-up sequences could have been more exciting. Still, the numbers are strong, the theme has been nicely dealt with, and in a dusty street shoot-out, Wanted Wildz Extreme would be an intimidating opponent.