Wild Beans

Wild Beans: Slot Overview

Beans generally come in two different forms. There's the healthy kind you have to force your kids to eat at the dinner table before they flee to the sanctuary of their devices to complain about what fairy tale villains their parents are, or the sweet jelly kind that goes down as easy as you like. Developer Quickspin has designed an online slot around the humble bean, and since it would have been a bit odd if it had used black-eyed beans or runner beans, the resulting game, Wild Beans, is a candy-themed release as stacked with features as it is dipped in sweet stuff.

However, while Wild Beans' screen is coated in sugary items, it doesn't have the same pastel dream quality a lot of these sorts of slots have. Instead, it's got a bunch of bean characters that appear both on symbols and during animated sequences when features trigger. Here, you'll meet beans with swords, swinging axes, casting spells, and firing arrows for players' amusement. Wild Beans is a cute game, in other words, one that uses personable characters rather than straightforward teeth-hammering sweetness to create its candy world.

Wild Beans plays out on a colorful 5x4 grid with 26 paylines ready to dish out wins. It's a low volatility slot (rated 2 out of 5), so expect a gentler ride, but one that still comes with four RTP settings, peaking at a respectable 96.08%. Bets start at just 5 cents and go up to $/€100 per spin - but if you're feeling bold, activating the Extra Bet cranks your stake up by 1.4x and boosts your chances of triggering the Wild Bean feature.

10 through Ace jelly bean-ish symbols are the low pays, awarding 1 to 2 times the bet for a five-of-a-kind win. After them is the Pod Squad, five actual bean characters, awarding 2.4 to 5 times the stake for 5 OAK. Wilds are present on all of the reels. They substitute all symbols except scatters and are worth 10x if five wilds make a win.

Wild Beans: Slot Features

Wild Beans has no less than six Wild Bean features, some of which are only available in the bonus round. When the bonus triggers, players Pick'N'Choose to find out which one of three rounds they get.

Wild Bean Feature

A Wild Bean feature can trigger at random on any spin or free spin. There are 6 Wild Bean modifiers in the game - 4 in the base game (Cash Wild, Tall Wild, Big Wild, Random Wild) and 2 exclusive to free spins (Multiplier Wild, Diagonal Wild). One type of Wild Bean modifier can appear per base game spin:

• Tall Wild - fills a random reel with wilds.
• Diagonal Wild - fills a diagonal line with wilds.
• Big Wild - fills a 2x2 area with wilds.
• Random Wild - adds 4 to 6 wilds to the reels.
• Multiplier Wild - adds a multiplier of x2 to x100 to itself and multiplies any wins it is part of. Multiple multipliers in the same win are summed.
• Cash Wild - places a random payout value of 1x to 100x to itself, paid once when the wild is part of at least one normal win.

Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters in the base game awards 10, 12, or 15 free spins, respectively. Players win +1 free spin for each scatter landing during the feature. During free spins, up to 3 Wild Bean modifiers or instances can occur per spin. Before the bonus begins, players click a door in the Pick'N'Choose to reveal which of three free spins rounds is awarded. Each one comes with a different set of Wild Beans modifiers. Loot Quest can activate Multiplier Wild, Cash Wild, or Random Wild. Smash Crew only activates Tall Wild, Diagonal Wild and Big Wild, while King's Castle can trigger all 6 Wild Bean modifiers.

Buy Feature

Wild Beans lets players buy into the bonus round for 50x to trigger the Pick'N'Choose with at least 3 scatters, or 100x buys King's Castle free spins with at least 3 scatters.

Wild Beans: Slot Verdict

Given the low volatility and sweet candy presentation, Wild Beans isn't likely to be the sort of slot players fire up to be bent over and brutalised by. It relies on its charm, with chuckles provided by a group of quirky bean characters. Quickspin has thickened the experience through a backstory about the Pod Squad, blessed by the magic of Candoria, making a trek along the Sugar Trail to overthrow a tyrant King, which players are invited to guide. Whilst a fun backstory might give a game extra thematic weight, Wild Beans is not a weighty release by any stretch of the imagination and probably shouldn't be approached as such. Then again, we're talking about a candy slot with a group of beans called the Pod Squad, so it's not like Wild Beans is trying to talk tough.

Like a handful of candy, there is a fair range of Wild Bean modifiers to discover, six if you're battling through the bonus round, though most of them simply add wild symbols to the grid. The other two add wilds, as well, but with either a multiplier or a cash prize attached. The action might have been more scintillating if a ways system rather than paylines had been used, but this way, speculatively, players may get to see the features trigger more often, so more wilds are spread about the place. Plus, a neat animation accompanying a Wild Bean trigger might make them that little bit extra desirable for players into this sort of thing.

Topple the tyrant and a max win of 4,374x is coming your way, which isn't the heftiest top prize ever seen in a sugar slot, but set about right given what Wild Beans is. Namely, a low volatile, cute candy game with a bit of variety but one which might leave you feeling a little hollow by the end, sort of like guilty smashing back a packet of jelly beans IRL.