For years now, alternative ideas have floated around over what happened to Elvis Presley, the King of Rock 'n Roll, and some of them are pretty out there. At least, according to an internet search which mentioned alleged sightings in places like a supermarket and a fast-food restaurant, as well as alien abduction. Elvis, according to Agent K in Men in Black, 'is not dead, he just went home.' We're not so sure about all that, yet according to software provider Pragmatic Play, Elvis may have had a distant fan or imitator, like a very, very distant one going by the name of Hellvis. Okay, probably not really, but it's the conjunction of the name Elvis with the word 'hell', which brings us to Hellvis Wild, an online slot based on a fiery demonic sort of dude with a guitar and a whole lot of rockin' attitude.
Rock music or heavy metal have, for some, an inherent demonic connotation, and it's this that Pragmatic Play brings to the fore in Hellvis Wild. The studio hasn't exactly made a major exploration of the theme, though, which is largely represented by some spiky fonted card royals and other miscellaneous symbols of rock on the game's 5-reel grid matrix. The Hellvis chappy with the lightning-adorned axe helps set the scene, as does the music, yet the plain purple background in the base game, flipping to red for free spins, could've been a bit more exciting. You get the rock effect but not as strongly as games like Kiss Reels of Rock or Testament from Play'n GO, for example. Shall we rock on, though?
>If so, then the next step is bet selection, where the options are 10 p/c to $/€100 per spin. Hellvis Wild also has an Ante Bet option, which increases the stake by 50% when it's activated, thereby increasing the chance of triggering free spins in the process, doubling the chance, in fact. Highly volatile (rated as 4.5 out of 5 for volatility), Hellvis Wild is available in three RTP models – 96.01% being the highest. With the Ante Bet on, the top return value increases to 96.05%.
With a 243 ways to win pay system, wins are awarded when matching symbols hit on at least 3 adjacent reels from the leftmost reel onwards. Pointy J-A card ranks make up the low pays, awarding 0.5 to 0.75 times the bet for a 5 OAK hit, while a guitar pick, a spiky collar, a microphone, and a-rockin' out hand sign are the high pays. Hit a winning way made up of 5 premium symbols to collect a payout of 1 to 2 times the bet. Hellvis Wild possesses 2 wild symbols – a regular and a Golden Wild. Both can substitute for any regular pay symbol. Should Golden Wilds land on all reels, making a win of their own, the payout for doing so is 10 times the bet.
>When making music, a gold record is kind of what you want, right? Proves you're popular and all. Well, in Hellvis Wild, the gold record is the Golden Wild symbol. Hit one of these to enter free respin mode. Golden Wilds land with a multiplier of x1. On each respin, the Golden Wild moves down a position, and its multiplier increases by +1. The game pays between each respin. If more than one Golden Wild is used in a win, the multiplier values are added.
Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols triggers 7, 11, or 15 free spins, respectively. During free spins, the Golden Wild has a progressive element added to it. For each Golden Wild that hits or nudges on a reel, the multiplier of future Golden Wilds on the specific reel increases by +1 for the remainder of the round. The value is displayed above each reel. Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols extends the round, awarding an extra 7, 11, or 15 free spins, respectively.
Get Hellvis Wild rocking right away into the bonus round by buying it for the cost of 100 times the stake. When buying free spins, the RTP value remains the same at 96.1%, max.
>Is Hellvis Wild a reskin? It could be. It's got the feel of something Pragmatic Play might have done before, what with the nudging multiplier wild, respins, and so on. The problem is the studio releases so many games so often it's hard to keep tabs on all of them, and it's easy for the not-so-memorable ones to blur into one another. Hellvis Wild is another one which feels destined to be somewhat unmemorable. Don't get us wrong; the game can be fun while it's in action, but like a fairly average tune that touches the top 100 music chart for a week or two before being swept away by a landslide of new songs, Hellvis Wild doesn't seem like it's destined to achieve gold record status anytime soon.
Not to worry, while Hellvis Wild is playing, it's got some good stuff to jam along to. A nudging, rising multiplier wild + respins is a good combo, and nice, too, that they are available in both phases of play. Theoretically better in free spins, of course, due to the progressive multiplier value of each reel. In this, the game brought to mind others like Multifly!, Jasmine Dreams, and Muertos Multiplier Megaways. No doubt there are others, too, not that those three slots are in any way identical to Hellvis Wild as such. The finishing touch is max winning potential of up to 5,000 times the bet.
And so, a nice slot, yet maybe if Pragmatic Play had developed the game world further, put one or two extra features in there, or added something from a gameplay perspective that was outrageously original, Hellvis Wild would have rocked harder. As it is, Hellvis Wolf rocks fairly hard, but it didn't take masses of time before we were ready to switch the track to something else.
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