Neon West

Neon West: Slot Overview

According to the commander of the starship Enterprise, Captain Kirk, space is the final frontier, and software provider Yggdrasil Gaming has taken this idea literally. What the studio has come up with is Neon West, a sci-fi meets Wild West slot that sees a bounty hunter roam 'neon-lit deserts and outlaw-infested towns in search of fortune and justice.' What this means for gamblers is they can pretend they're cyberpunk cowboys traversing the stars, swaggering into cosmic saloons, attempting to bag positive returns from free spins with sticky wilds, free spins with multipliers, or a trail bonus game.

Rarely, if ever, probably never, has a Western slot been accompanied by such a hip swaying disco track. Neon West isn't trying to be a regular Western slot, though, but rather it delivers a frontier of the future, whether on Earth or on a far-distant, recently colonised planet in another system, who can say? It's got Multifly, 6 in the Chamber, mildly Money Train 4 tones, a steampunk cowboy, cyberpunk vibe, that sort of thing, going on. Given the large number of Wild West slots already available, any altered angle is appreciated. As well as the slightly unusual theme use, Neon West comes with a set of slightly unusual features, as well, triggering curiosity.

Neon gunslingers can load up stakes of 20c to $/€70 per spin before taking Neon West on. Three RTP configurations have been designed, and 96% is the preferred return, while the math model volatility is high. Theoretically, roughly 1 in 4 spins will produce a win, along 20 paylines affixed to the 4x3 gaming area.

The low pays are hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades, which can only form 4 OAK wins, worth 0.25x the bet. High pays are four character symbols which are able to create 3 or 4 OAK winning combinations, worth up to 2.5x to 6.25x the bet. Wild trains replace any symbol except scatters. Wilds hit on all reels and pay 7.5x for a 4-of-a-kind combination.

Neon West: Slot Features

A growing wild feature adds to the base game action, and when the bonus round triggers, players have three choices to make - sticky, multiplier, or trail.

Growing Wild Feature

When a wild symbol lands, it expands randomly over 1, 2, or 3 adjacent symbols. It will not expand over scatters or wilds already present. The Growing Wild feature is available in the base game and free spins round.

Bonus Choice

Hitting 3 or 4 scatters awards the bonus choice where players pick 6 free spins with sticky wilds, 5 free spins with multiplier, or the trail bonus game.

• Sticky Wilds - when wilds land, they expand after the first win is counted, and then stay sticky for the rest of the round.
• Multipliers - at the start of the round, 3-8 random symbol positions have a cover with a multiplier of x1 to x5 placed over them. If a symbol behind a cover takes part in a win, the cover is destroyed, and its value is added to a total multiplier. At the end of the feature, the total amount won is multiplied by the total multiplier.

The Trail Bonus Game

In this bonus, players take 1 to 6 steps around a trail per turn. Each turn removes one spark from a meter, which initially has 3 sparks. The spark meter is refilled when landing on certain nodes on the trail. When a player passes around the trail and through the starting gates again, +1 extra spark is added, and all prize nodes increase by +3x. The bonus ends when there are no sparks left in the meter.

The game area consists of a loop with several smaller side loops. Each node on the loop has either a prize, a feature, or a golden feature. Landing on a Streamliner train node activates any feature, while landing on a regular node with a prize awards its value. The Golden Streamliner train node can activate only persistent features or the collect all feature. The features include:

• Cash - 15x to 30x is added to the win.
• Sheriff - 3x to 5x is added to each prize node.
• Persistent Sheriff - acts as the Sheriff after each move.
• Two Guns - 75x to 125x is added to 2 to 3 prize nodes.
• Persistent Two Guns - acts as Two Guns after each move.
• Sniper - multiplies 2 to 4 prize nodes by 2.
• Persistent Sniper - acts as a Sniper after each move.
• Refuel - a spark icon is added to some prize nodes that don't already have one.</li<>
• Throw Back - the value of the collected win is added to several prize nodes.
• Collect - the value of the next 4 prize nodes is added to the collected win.
• Collect All - the value of all prize nodes is added to the win.

Feature Buy

For 30 times the bet, players may buy into the Trail Bonus round.

Neon West: Slot Verdict

Neon West is a game that elbows its way through the crowd of Western slots on a mission to carve out its own niche somewhere in the galaxy. It almost makes it, too. There is a bunch of relatively unique stuff here to try out. Though the concept has been explored before, there isn't a huge number of sci-fi Westerns, which gives Neon West a splash of individuality. Some of the theme's execution is odd, such as the driving disco soundtrack, but other aspects are quite interesting, such as the Native American pay symbol and the old school meets high tech visual fusion kicking off thoughts about how the future might be was enjoyable.

Some of Neon West hits softer than others, however. In particular, the novelty factor of the two free spin rounds wore off faster than the trail bonus. They're not duds, stacking sticky wilds on a 4x3 game grid has promise, and building an end-of-round multiplier could be fun for some. A lack of retriggers does hurt, though. The trail is where the bulk of Neon West's intrigue lies, however, and it is similar in some ways to Relax Gaming's Dead Man's Trail bonus. The first couple of rounds were weak, the trail ending very quickly, resulting in meagre payouts. After that, better outcomes occurred, travelling around the trail multiple times, triggering the odd feature along the way. Cash was the most numerous feature, but there are other good ones in there if you can get them, especially persistent versions, which are always highly coveted.

Cracking Neon West's full potential won't fund a trip to the stars, but its 5,500x max win is an alright round number to aim cyber-pistols at. It's an unusual game that does things a little bit differently, and one that should provide players with a fair amount of entertainment as they figure out if it's ultimately for them or not.