Out of the Woods

Out of the Woods: Slot Overview

Despite humankind continuing to ravage the planet for roads, cities, and farmland, there remain pockets of wilderness where one may chance upon the untouched beauty of nature, or if you're unlucky, bump into a bunch of homicidal owl-worshipping cultists. At least, gamblers will cross the latter lot when giving developer Pragmatic Play's slot Out of the Woods a spin. In this game, four unsuspecting friends find themselves hunted through a sinister forest by a group of unfriendly individuals while wild multiplier stacks work in tandem with respins to drive the slot's survival-themed hunt and evade gameplay.

Trekking through the wilderness away from the hustle and bustle of civilisation is all well and good till something goes horribly wrong, as it has done to the four protagonists in Out of the Woods. They seem to have stumbled across a bizarre cult armed with Medieval weaponry. One moment, the foursome is running for their lives; in another scene, their heads have been removed from their bodies and hung on the wall like hunting trophies. Sacrifices to the great owl, perhaps. Whatever is going on, Out of the Woods is a departure from Pragmatic Play's usual MO, following in the footsteps of Hell Butcher, as evidence of the studio's desire to explore different avenues of thought.

Out of the Woods conducts its action on a 5x4 grid where 25 paylines evaluate winning combinations. It runs on a medium volatile math model where the most generous of the three RTP variants is 96.52%. Gamblers may stake $/€0.25 to $/€250 while a selection of special bets and features buys are available as well.

Ten to Ace card ranks resting precariously on traps are Out of the Woods' low pay symbols, awarding 1.2x to 3.6x the bet for a 5 OAK winning line. Four creeped out characters are the game's high pays, and they award 6x to 24x the stake for a 5-of-a-kind hit. Regular owl wilds hit on all reels, where they substitute for all symbols except the scatter. Five wilds in a winning line pay 24x.

Out of the Woods: Slot Features

In the woods, the features are Multiplier Wilds, which can land in stacks, free spins, Special Bets, and feature buys.

Multiplier Wild

The Multiplier Wild substitutes for all symbols except the scatter. It can only land fully stacked. When Multiplier Wilds land as a stack, the wild symbols have multipliers of x1, x2, x3, and x4 from bottom to top. After each spin that contains a reel with Multiplier Wilds, if any winning combination appears, the game respins, and the Multiplier Wild stack moves one or more positions down, revealing more Multiplier Wilds on top of the stack, each one with a multiplier increased by +1 for each position the stack moved down. If a Multiplier Wild with a golden rim reaches the bottom of the reel and would move down on the next respin, the stack moves down 2 to 10 positions. Multiplier Wilds have the same payout values as the regular wild.

Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters awards players with 10, 15, or 20 free spins, respectively. The first Multiplier Wild stack that lands during the round has multipliers of x1-x4. The next stack that hits starts with the highest multiplier achieved in the previous stack and respins, at the top of the stack. Players win an extra 10, 15, or 20 free spins if 3, 4, or 5 scatters hit.

Special Bets & Feature Buy

Activating the Ante Bet costs 5x to make the chance of triggering free spins 13 times higher, while the Super Spin at 10x guarantees a wild stack on each spin. Free spins cannot trigger from a Super Spin. To buy the bonus round, the options are 100x for standard free spins or 500x for super free spins, where wilds start from x10-x14.

Out of the Woods: Slot Verdict

Out of the Woods sees Pragmatic Play step outside its comfort zone to explore a darker, narrative-driven survival concept. For a studio heavily associated with topics like fishing, mythology and candy, this is a noticeable stylistic shift. Out of the Woods takes place in an isolated forest infested with murderous zealots, which is part humorous, part unsettling. The visual storytelling is quite grim, as it bounces from hooded cultists toasting marshmallows and singing songs around a campfire, to cultists admiring a bunch of decapitated heads. A cartoon art style works with the humorous elements to cushion the effect, so Out of the Woods lacks the same insidious sense of doom found in games like Disorder or Darkness, but it is a dark, atmospheric departure for the developer.

Beyond the cartoon Blair Witch stuff is gameplay that relies on a cunning Multiplier Wild system. What makes it interesting is the stacking element, combined with respins, increasing multiplier values. When in motion, Out of the Woods' stacks had a vaguely Razor Shark feel to them, though in reality, they function very differently, since they're wilds only, never pay symbols or coins. They are wilds with multipliers, though, and even if they start modestly, when consecutive wins and respins are increasing multiplier values, fruitful momentum is a definite possibility.

On the other hand, while the main feature has promise, the game is a little mechanically thin, so after seeing the stacks cycle through a few times, that's about all it's got going on. Still, with a 10,000x win cap and offbeat theme, Out of the Woods is a memorable experiment from Pragmatic Play. If you are looking to escape the studio's usual hangout spots and want a slightly twisted walk through the unexpected, this cult-themed thriller is worth risking a stroll into the deep, dark wilderness.