Western fans, boot up, saddle up, grab your tasselled shirt and come take a gander at Pragmatic Play's gunslinging creation, The Wild Gang. Is it just us, or does The Wild Gang sound a bit, dunno, naff? Shouldn't judge a game on its title and all, but still. Anyway, The Wild Gang did get better once given the chance. It features an actual gang of four wild symbols, which all do the same thing yet can work together to help pile on sizable multipliers in the two free spins rounds. So, if moseying into town, dramatically slamming open saloon doors, then eye-balling each and every patron to let them know who's boss sounds appealing, maybe The Wild Gang is just the outlet you're looking for.
On the subject of looks, The Wild Gang didn't overly impress right off the bat, though it sets a gritty Western tone. A wood-framed game grid sits on the edge of a dusty brown wooden town somewhere on the frontier. Where the skies blaze red, yellow, n' orange, and rock formations tower in the distance, reminding observers that they were here a long time before people arrived, and they'll be around a heck of a lot longer, too, even if whoever's witnessing them does manage to make a name for themselves in this two-bit town. It's got a sort of Red Dead Redemption 2 look to it. A twangy, whistly Western tune plays, the sort that if it doesn't get your trigger finger twitching, nothing will.
>With 2,304 ways to win at default level, The Wild Gang is mostly played on a 6-reel game grid lined up in a 3-4-4-4-4-3 formation, awarding wins left to right from the first reel onwards. There are two ways of playing The Wild Gang. One is picking a stake of 20 c to $/€240 and hitting spin – this way has na RTP of 96.02%. The second is buying free spins, where the return value is slightly greater at 96.04%. As for volatility, Pragmatic Play has marked this as high.
For symbols, we find ultra-Western styled J to A card royals as lows, then boots, a bottle, a knife, a pistol, and a badge as the highs. Six-of-a-kind winning ways pay 0.6-0.7 times the bet for the lows and 1 to 7.5 times the bet for the highs.
>The Wild Gang lives up to its name through the use of four wild symbols and their various abilities in the base and bonus game. While the four wilds look different and are assigned their own reel, they all perform the same way. Wilds appear on reels 2, 3, 4, and 5. They are actually both wild and scatter. In the base game, when wilds appear on reels 2 or 3, they function as wilds, substituting for all pay symbols. When this happens, they also get a random multiplier of x2, x3, or x4. Multipliers apply to wins for the spin, and if there are two multipliers, they multiply each other. When 3 or 4 wilds appear in the base game, they function as scatters instead and free spins are won.
Mystery symbols appear on all reels. When they hit, all instances transform into the same random pay symbol.
Hitting 3 wild/scatters in the base game triggers the Wanted Free Spins round, while 4 wild/scatters trigger the Dead Or Alive Free Spins round. Both rounds award 8 free spins, but the Dead Or Alive round is played on a 6x4 game grid with 4,096 ways to win. The first time each of the wilds lands, they have an x2 multiplier, the second time, an x3 multiplier, and from the third time onwards, no multiplier. It is the same for Dead Or Alive Free Spins, except the second time they hit, the multiplier is x4.
The wild multipliers are collected by a meter, which persists till the round ends. It starts on x1 and is multiplied by any multiplier that hits. This total multiplier applies to the win of each spin. For both rounds, when all 4 wilds appear at least once, +2 extra free spins are awarded. When all four wilds appear twice, +2 more free spins are awarded. The feature cannot be retriggered again after this.
Free spins can be instantly triggered by buying them from the base game. Wanted Free Spins cost 80 times the bet, while Dead Or Alive Free Spins have a price tag of 200 times the bet.
>The Wild Gang was a slot which significantly improved as the test session progressed. The first impression wasn't great. The Wild Gang? It sounded like the sort of thing 10 year old boys would call their little group of wannabe sigmas to impress other kids in the schoolyard. The game didn't exactly wow at first glimpse, either. It didn't really stand out from the bunch of other Westerns Pragmatic Play had done – Wild West Gold, Cowboy Coins, Heist for the Golden Nuggets, for example. The Wild Gang has some neat count-up scenes and is a bit dark, though, perhaps influenced by Wanted Dead or a Wild, perhaps not. Some of the wording rang bells from Hacksaw Gaming's slot anyway.
The gameplay is fairly fresh, and while some of the rules seemed limited on paper, such as each wild only landing with a multiplier twice in bonus rounds, in practice, they could be pretty impressive. What helps make it so is that wild multiplier values multiply the win multiplier instead of just being added to it. On a good run, the win multiplier can quickly ratchet up to useful levels, and when combined with several thousand ways to win, fireworks may happen. After bashing away on a calculator, the multiplier's maximum theoretical value would appear to be x4,096. That's DoubleMax numbers, and approaching firepower of such magnitude would definitely be a help in achieving The Wild Gang's 10,000x the bet max win.
What started off low-key, having to review another so-so looking Western slot, turned out pretty swell by the end. Once again, Pragmatic Play has pulled one or two tricks from its sleeves to make an entertaining slot that might not be the fastest gun in the West but sure is quick on the draw.
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