The Wildos 2

The Wildos 2: Slot Overview

Nearly two years before this review, gosh, doesn't time fly, developer Thunderkick flexed its Western chops to design The Wildos, a game that introduced players to a trio of masked bandits while reacquainting them with sticky wild multipliers. It wasn't the biggest slot to hit the market compared to some of its competition, yet the mix of sticky wild multipliers and professional execution made it a fun, tidy wee package. A sequel, The Wildos 2, has rolled out the Thunderkick door now, and it's a bigger, broader slot than the original, but it keeps the focus squarely on getting red hot sticky wild multipliers on the reels.

Clearly, the Wildo characters have refused to reform their naughty ways because they're back behind bars, this time housed in a jail carriage next to the gaming grid. Both jail and grid are part of a choo-choo train making its way through a dusty desert landscape. To the right of the grid, a dollar-signed doorway leads to a carriage the villains bust into during the bonus game. Basically, the visual layout is the same as the previous game, except the rickety one-house town has been traded in for a rail-bound setting. Don't worry; the Wildo chappies are as rambunctious as ever.

20 paylines are built into a bigger than before 5x4 gaming grid, creating winning combinations from left to right starting on the leftmost reel. Before twirling your six shooters, be sure to choose an appropriate bet from a stake range of 10 c to $/€100, and take a moment to decide whether the Bet+ or the feature buys are of use. Unsurprisingly yet still a bit disappointing, the RTP has dropped a notch compared to the first Wildos slot to a level of 94.19%, while the math model volatility is high.

The 3 kinda zany kinda sinister Wildo characters are the 3 highest paying symbols, awarding 15 to 20 times the bet for a 5 OAK combination. Under them are clubs, diamonds, spades, hearts, pocket watches, hats, and necklaces, worth 2 to 4 times the bet for a 5 OAK line.

The Wildos 2: Slot Features

The Wildos 2 expands on the original, where the features, in a nutshell, are Multiplier Wilds, a Bounty Poster feature, a free spins bonus game, a super bonus game, Bet+ ante bets, and feature buys.

Multiplier Wilds

Multiplier Wilds on the three middle reels substitute for all symbols except other wilds and scatters. Multiplier Wilds reveal random multipliers, which may be Bronze (x1, x2, or x3), Silver (x5, x6, or x8) or Gold (x10, x15, or x25). Multipliers are added when they are combined.

Bounty Poster Feature

Landing a Wildo poster symbol triggers 1 of 3 modifiers:

• The Green Wildo Poster symbol adds 1 to 4 Bronze Wilds,
• The Blue Wildo Poster symbol adds 1 to 5 Silver Wilds.
• The Red Wildo Poster adds 1 to 5 Gold Wilds to reels 2-4.

Scatter symbols are not affected. Higher-value wild symbols can upgrade lower-value wilds, but not the other way around. When the feature ends, Bounty Poster symbols act as the corresponding high-pay symbols. Bounty Poster symbols cannot be covered by the added wilds.

Bonus Game

The bonus round is triggered by landing 3 scatter symbols and comes with 4 options.

• Bronze Bonus with 12 free spins.
• Silver Bonus with 9 free spins.
• Gold Bonus with 6 free spins.
• Random Bonus with 6, 9, or 12 free spins and with a chance of awarding the Super Bonus.

During the feature, all wild types can land, but only the selected type can be sticky. However, the Super Bonus awards 12 free spins with all wilds sticky. During the round, Bounty Poster symbols may land and trigger, but they do not land if no upgrade or free wild positions are available. If a higher value wild lands on a lower value wild, the higher value applies on the spin then reverts, unless it happens in the Super Bonus. In the Super Bonus, upgrades persist through the round. Extra free spins are granted for filling reels 2, 3, or 4 with Sticky Wilds, awarding one-third of the initially won number of free spins per reel.

Super Bonus

The Super Bonus may be triggered by landing 2 regular scatters + 1 super scatter in the base game, as well as winning it from the random bonus option at the bonus game selection. Winning it in the base game skips the pick option, starting the round immediately.

Bet+ and Feature Buys

The two Bet+ options are a Bonus Boost, making each spin 2 times more likely to trigger a bonus game for 1.5x the bet per spin, or the Bonus Boost Plus, making each spin 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus game for 3x the bet. Even more options are in wait at the feature buy menu, where players can buy a random bonus, the Bronze Wild Bonus, the Silver Wild Bonus, or the Gold Wild Bonus for 100x each. The last choice is the Super Bonus for 500x.

The Wildos 2: Slot Verdict

Despite some feature similarities, The Wildos held back from directly taking on the big dogs in the Western sticky wild category, such as NetEnt's Dead or Alive 2, preferring to go heavy on the cartoon japes while keeping a lid on winning potential. This approach, in some ways, put The Wildos closer to, say, Pragmatic Play's The Dog House, and there was a lot to like about it. For the sequel, Thunderkick has held on to many of the original slot's main ideas but has ramped up the rules to create a more complex game than the original. It's not a complicated slot as such, but compared to The Wildos, there are more rules and extra moving parts which need to come together to reach peak pinnacle moments.

The pinnacle would surely be covering the middle three reels with sticky Gold wilds in free spins, but The Wildos 2 is still able to dish out excitement without getting quite so far into the game. One little, maybe not so little, limiting mechanism is that when multiple multipliers are in the same win, their values are added together before being applied rather than multiplied as they were last time. The highest combined multiplier is lower, too, at x75. A possible counterbalance to this is the new Bounty Poster feature, which has the power to chuck up to 5 Gold Wilds on the reels, making them a highly desirable symbol. Each of the game's components gets even more desirable in the bonus game - such is the suspense that sticky wilds are able to produce.

When digging for critique, there is a chance that players who liked the straightforward simplicity of the original release (or prefer its more generous RTP) might find the extra rules in The Wildos 2 a bit of a faff. However, there's nothing here that's difficult to wrap your head around, and bigger winning potential of 10,000x the bet coupled with an interesting mechanical shift makes it one for Wildos-philes to choo-choo check out.