Wild Wild Bananas is an online slot from developer Pragmatic Play that comes after an earlier Irish-themed number titled Wild Wild Riches. At a first glance, it might be tempting to brand Wild Wild Bananas with a clone label, and true, the two games do have a bunch of things in common right across the board. Wild Wild Bananas is a progression, though and has tweaks to its rules, differently functioning features, and drastically increased winning potential. Sounds pretty wild wild? Only one way to find out.
First up are one of the most noticeable changes and one of the most noticeable similarities. As to the former, Wild Wild Bananas leaves behind the Emerald Isle for somewhere more tropical. A beach, somewhere the seawater looks warm and inviting, and exotic plant life abounds. Bamboo has been lashed together to frame the similar bit, the 5 reel game grid with its 3-3-4-4-4 layout. This grid can actually grow larger this time around, exactly how is covered below. The setting could be a deserted island, maybe, hard to tell, but the Mowgli-esque character symbol would suggest play occurs far away from civilization, or he's simply a child from a nearby settlement. Open to interpretation, perhaps.
As well as picking a scenario, players may also pick a bet of 25 p/c to $/€100 per spin and whether or not to switch the Ante Bet on or leave it off. Turning it on increases the stake by 20% whilst doubling the chance of triggering free spins in the process. With the Ante Bet off, the game generates a theoretical return value of 96.1%, rising to 96.15% with the Ante Bet switched on. Any device can be used to play this highly volatile game (rated 4 out of 5), such as a mobile, desktop, or tablet.
Wild Wild Bananas employs a ways system for evaluating wins, so when three or more matching symbols land on at least three consecutive reels from the left side, a payout is triggered. Rewards vary from 0.4-0.8x the bet for landing five diamonds, clubs, hearts, or spades, moving up to 1-4x the bet for five snakes, toucans, monkeys, or children. Wilds can help out with this task by replacing any regular pay symbols. Wilds are present only on the first two reels.
Not only are wild symbols wild, but they are also linked to the Wild Wild Bananas' Money Collect feature and free spins round.
Bananas come in as the Money symbols, appearing on reels 3, 4, and 5. When banana symbols land, they possess a money award of 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 8x, 10x, 15x, or 25x the bet. Alternatively, bananas might instead display the Mini, Major, or Mega jackpots worth 50x, 100x, or 500x the bet, respectively. Note that jackpot values only appear on the fifth reel. Moreover, when wild symbols land on reels 1 and 2, next to adjacent banana symbols on reels 3-5, forming a kind of left-to-right pay way, the banana values in it are paid out. This feature is available in the base game and in free spins.
When wild symbols land on the first two reels and a bonus symbol hits on the third reel, players are awarded 10 free spins. In free spins, more wilds and bananas are present on the reels. Wild Wild Bananas has a new symbol not found in Wild Wild Riches, too, the Golden Money symbol. It is present on reels 3-5 only in the bonus round. When a Golden Money symbol hits, the number of positions on its reel increases by +1 for the rest of the feature. Reels can reach 8 positions high maximum. If a Golden Money symbol lands on a reel that is already 8 cells high, a random number of 5-10 free spins are awarded. Retriggers only occur once per reel, so after a retrigger, Golden Money symbols don't appear on the corresponding reel anymore.
The name's not a misnomer, as Wild Wild Bananas can get pretty crazy, at the same time alluding to one or two of the game's main rules - hitting wilds on the two first reels in order to be able to collect Money symbols or trigger free spins. Wild Wild Bananas has the technical ability to get a lot wilder than Wild Wild Riches in terms of winning potential, thanks in part to the new reel-expanding abilities of the Golden Money symbol. This opens up the board quite significantly should enough Golden Money symbols land, freeing up extra space for more Money symbols or even regular ways wins to hit.
As an observation, five-of-a-kind payout values are less than they were before, and multipliers have been removed in an attempt to balance things out, presumably. However, that hasn't prevented Wild Wild Bananas from being the higher potential slot of the two, where the win cap has been set at 12,000x the bet compared to the 4,608x top prize of before. The audio-visual contribution to the game's enjoyment is about the same as it was before, though enjoyment levels may be affected by how one feels about Irish-themed slots since they're a lot more common than beachy ones.
In either case, both games have the typical Pragmatic Play lustre the studio is adept at pulling off, that is, the bright, glossy, slick execution, helping keep the action flowing. It flows pretty well in Wild Wild Bananas, making it a possible option if money-symbol collecting games are a personal favourite. The ramped-up win cap and expanding reels mechanic may be the elements needed to add a greater level of desirability than was available in the previous game.
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