Hopefully, you're feeling energetic players because Pragmatic Play has put together not just a beach party, but a Wild Beach Party. After a playthrough, though, we're not so sure wild is the right word here. Perhaps cheesy is more apt. Basically a reskin of Fruit Party 2, the features can technically be effective when they pop, even though they aren't the wildest we've seen. If you were picturing full moon parties in Goa or a Floridian spring break, you better adjust your expectations because Wild Beach Party is a bit more subdued.
When Wild Beach Party loads, it quickly becomes apparent that the participants at this party are yours truly and a skimpily dressed cartoon 'babe'. We never get a name, sadly, but the random beach girl has been created in an anime style - all big eyes, and err, body parts. While there is plenty of wild symbol activity on the reels, off it, the party really isn't all that wild. The base game takes place in the middle of the day, on a sun-drenched beach, then night descends for free spins, which is closer to quiet cocktail time than an outrageous hooley.
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Played on a 7x7 game grid, Wild Beach Party uses a cluster pays system in conjunction with tumbles. Clusters of five matching symbols connecting vertically or horizontally constitute a winner and trigger the tumble mechanic after they have been paid. This occurs in a highly volatile manner, while RTP comes in a variety of forms - the most optimal return value being a healthy 96.53%. Other stats include a hit rate of 1 in 2.5 and fairly favourable max win odds of 1 in 495,050. Any device may be used, and players can pick stakes of 20 p/c to $/€100 per paid spin.
The symbols used in Wild Beach Party do kind of fit the theme while being totally generic as well. We're talking about fruit here, in seven varieties such as blueberries, pears, oranges, bananas, apples, grapes, and pineapples. Landing a cluster of five is worth 0.2 to 1 times the stake, all the way up to 20-150x for clusters of 15+. Wilds are able to replace any of the fruit symbols to complete winning clusters and are also the game's key feature, as we'll see next.
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When bopping at this beach party, players will eventually bump into features such as tumbles, random wild multipliers, free spins, and perhaps a bonus buy facility.
This feature means that every winning cluster is paid then disappears from the reels. The remaining symbols drop down as far as they can go to plug the gaps, and new clusters may form. If they do, the tumbling repeats until no new win appears.
Whenever a cluster of winning symbols disappears from the board, there is a chance it randomly creates a wild symbol in one of the empty cells. When the wild first appears, it has a multiplier value of x2 that is applied to any future wins it is part of. If the wild is used in a win, it disappears and may randomly appear again. Repeat wilds increase their multiplier through x4, x8, x16, x32, x64, x128, to x256. If more than one wild symbol is part of a win, the values are added together before being used to boost a win.
Launch the bonus round by landing 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 scatter symbols to win 10, 12, 15, 20, or 25 free spins, plus a payout of 3, 5, 10, 20, or 100 times the stake, respectively. What changes in free spins is when the random wild appears, it has a starting multiplier value of x3 and can progressively reach as high as x729 when it appears consecutively. Hitting 3 or more scatters awards an additional +5 free spins.
Free spins can be instantly triggered from the base game for the cost of 100x the total stake by hitting the bonus buy button. When bought, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 scatters can hit to activate free spins.
Whether Wild Beach Party is the game for you largely comes down to your thoughts on scantily attired cartoon ladies in slots. Maybe players partial to a bit of hentai will be titillated by the goodies found in Wild Beach Party? For the rest, dunno, the game is constantly in danger of coming across as a bit desperate and generic, like a tacky 'look at me, I'm hot' type of post. If you're into cartoon flesh, cool, more power to you. For us, the cheese factor was a little too high to ignore, spoiling whatever good things Wild Beach Party had to offer.
Tearing your eyes away from the jiggling leads to an inspection of what's actually happening on the game grid. Here we find a pretty bare-bones cluster paying slot most of the time. It's bright and bubbly, which admittedly kind of fits the tropical beach location, but the fruit thing is a fall-back easy option. The clusters and tumble combo is augmented with random wild multipliers, which can reach impressive levels, but even then, it is all pretty standard stuff. Pragmatic Play hasn't gone to great lengths to do anything especially inventive with the features. Wild Beach Party can technically perform when wild multipliers step up, but it relies a little too heavily on its cartoon babe to carry the game, making everything else feel like an afterthought rather than a showcase of Pragmatic Play's creative design prowess. For the record, payout possibilities have been capped at 5,000x the bet.
So, like the best of parties, those all-nighters, or all weekenders, or however you like to celebrate, we come to the inevitable end. However, there was no come down when testing was over, rather a vague sense of relief that this particular party had finally fizzled away.
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