William Shakespeare famously wrote, 'That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet', and while this might be true, some words just roll off the tongue real well. One is 'mustang', a word which conjures up all sorts of romantic North American connotations, real or imagined. The word 'mustang' certainly sounds a lot more poetic than its definition from Bing; 'an American feral horse which is typically small and lightly built.' Huh. Interesting, since the word 'mustang' feels well suited to ideas of big, powerful automobiles or wild, free broncos of the plains. It's the latter definition Pragmatic Play is banking on conjuring up with its online slot Mustang Trail and the subject of today's review.
Mustang Trail is a North American-themed slot which, for players new to betting online, is a highly popular gambling niche. On a regular basis, developers try to tempt players back to the wide-open vistas of this vast continent to try their luck alongside the beasts and critters inhabiting it. Mustang Trail offers a pretty decent view of it. There are traditional Native American structures on either side of the gaming grid, rocky features, a glowing cloudy sky, birds, cactus, and an eagle. A peaceful scene of the American countryside. At least, it would have been peaceful if Mustang Trail hadn't possessed one of the most highly charged soundtracks ever heard in one of these sorts of games. The tune is so exceptionally rousing it is almost out of place, with a high-energy vibe that was laugh-out-loud unexpected. Not much about Mustang Trail is unmissable, but it is almost worth loading the game just to boogie along to the soundtrack.
When ready to take on the trail, players may pick a stake of 10 p/c to $/€250 per paid spin, and a bonus buy is available where you can buy 8 free spins for 50x the stake. The default RTP clocks in at 96.04%, rising a notch to 96.05% when buying free spins, though lower configurations are available. Mustang Trail's math model is highly volatile (5 out of 5), and it is played on a 5-reel, 3-row gaming grid with 10 paylines for win evaluations.
Turning our focus to the pay symbols, we find two groups – low-pay card royals and high-pay animals. The card royals include 10, J, Q, K, and A, paying 10 times the bet for a 5 OAK winning line, while the high-pay animals include a lizard, a mountain goat-like entity, an eagle, a buffalo, and a mustang, worth 20 to 150 times the bet for a 5 symbol hit. Another horse, this one being ridden, appears on Mustang Trail's wild symbol, present on all reels. Wilds have the same value as the mustang pay symbol, and they can be used to substitute for anything except the scatter.
The wild symbol also does something special in the base game. Whenever a wild hits in the base game, a random number of wilds are added to the reels in random positions. Wilds, some wilds, also get special powers during free spins, too.
Hitting 3 scatters triggers 8 free spins. During free spins, scatter symbols are collected on a meter when they land. For every 3rd scatter collected, +5 free spins are awarded, plus a wild symbol is added to the reels in a random position. Wilds added this way remain on the reels until the end of the round.
Sometimes you finish playing a game and really can't think of much to say about it. Mustang Trail was one of those times. Not much about it stood out to promote long periods of lingering around on this particular trail. Oh, wait, one exception was the music which is like a bizarre Communist Bloc dance remix of a country and western tune. Other than that, a bunch of animal symbols spin on the reels; a few wins hit here and there, and that's about it. On the flip side, Mustang Trail also didn't do anything so horrific it had us running for the plains cowering in terror. It joins a popular slot category, following in the footsteps of games like Wolf Gold, Mustang Gold, et al. in terms of set, setting, and atmosphere.
Spose a few words about the features is in order, and one thing which stood out about them was wild symbols in the main game seemed to be few and far between. Logical, in some ways, since when you land a wild in the base game, you land a bunch (hopefully) due to the random wild symbol add dynamic. Likewise, hopefully, a good number of scatters will be collected in free spins to stack as many sticky wilds on the reels as you possibly can. Collecting a few scatters didn't seem to be hugely difficult to do during the test session, though wilds didn't always stick in the most useful of positions. Another potential positive for some players is that buying free spins in Mustang Trail isn't expensive when compared to a lot of what other slots are charging these days. As an extreme example on the opposite end of the scale, Tombstone RIP's 3,000x the bet Boothill buy feature is like buying a can of soda in Monaco or a cappuccino in St Mark's Square by comparison to Mustang Trail.
Max win is solid with being an exception as well, with a win cap of 5,000x the bet in place, like a lot of Pragmatic Play slots do nowadays. To sum up, a pretty okay game that does nothing terrible to cause an instant write-off nor anything exceptional to get into a steaming rampage over.
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