Wild West Gold Slot Review

Wild West Gold Game Details

RTP:	96.51%
Reels:	5
Paylines:	40

Jackpot:	6,750 x Stake
Progressive:	No
Bonus Round:	Yes

Free Spins:	Yes
Auto Play Feature:	Yes
Scatter Symbol:	Yes

Where To Play Wild West Gold

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Wild West Gold is another popular online slot release from Pragmatic Play, and, as the name suggests, the game is set in the old Wild West, with graphics and sound effects to match.

Built around a 5-reel, 4-row format, Wild West Gold has 40 fixed paylines, and the game’s RTP comes in at a decent figure; 96.51%. The betting limits are designed to suit all players, and you can play from between 0.20 and 100 credits per spin.

In this Wild West Gold slot review, I’m going to show you exactly what to expect when you try out this volatile slot for yourself.

Let’s kick things off with a look at how to actually play Wild West Gold slot, either online or on your mobile. Later on, I’ll cover symbols and payouts, bonuses and features and how to win the game’s jackpot!

How To Play

Wild West Gold, like virtually all Pragmatic Play slots, is incredibly easy-to-play, and the user-interface is clear, easy-to-use and easy-to-navigate.

In the bottom right-hand-corner of the screen you’ll see the main spin button – and either side of this spin button you’ll find plus and minus symbols. These are used to adjust the size of your bet, and you can also click the amount to bring up a window that shows you all of the betting options available.

Once you’ve selected how much you want to bet, simply hit the spin button and you’ll be able to start playing! There’s also an autoplay function which allows you to set up to 100 spins to play-out automatically, and, if you’re located outside of the UK you’ll also be able to slam-stop (quickspin) the reels.

Symbols and Payouts

Something we see in many Pragmatic Play slots is the classic card value symbols making up the lower-paying symbols. The same can be said for Wild West Gold, and the lower-paying symbols are represented by playing card values, including 10, jack, queen, king, and ace. These don’t pay a huge amount – and outside of the free spins bonus round, they will rarely contribute to any meaningful-sized wins.

Thankfully, the higher-paying symbols in Wild West Gold are worth a lot more, and you’ll see a number of Western-inspired symbols. You’ll find a Working Girl with a Stiletto Blade, and next up you’ll see a Lady Gunslinger – there’s also a Bearded Man, and these are the mid-paying symbols in Wild West Gold.

The game’s top-paying symbol is the Sheriff – and landing a 5-of-a-kind combo of him awards a payout worth 20X your total stake.

Wild symbols appear on reels 2, 3, and 4 only, and when they land in view they come with a random multiplier of between 2X and 5X; we’ll talk more about this – and how these multipliers contribute to the game’s significant win-potential – in the following section of this review.

Bonus Features

Wild West Gold is all about the bonus round – and there’s just one, which takes the form of a free spins round. Below, I’m going to be taking you through how the free spins bonus round works, and what to expect!

Free Spins

The free spins round is your easy gateway to the bigger wins on the Wild West Gold slot.

To trigger the free spins bonus round in Wild West Gold you’ll need to land three of the scatter symbols on reels 1, 3 and 5 during the base-game.

You will then be awarded with 8 free spins.

Now, this is where things start to get interesting – and during the free games, any wilds that land on the middle three reels transform into sticky wilds. They then lock in place – staying there for the remainder of the bonus round – and a multiplier between 2X and 5X will be applied to the wild, and applied to any wins that wild helps form.

The wild multipliers multiply against one another too – so if you can get three wild multipliers on an active payline, then you’re all but guaranteed some big wins. It’s also possible to win additional free spins by landing two or more Sheriff Badge scatter symbols during the bonus. This awards an extra 4 free spins, and if you land 5 of these scatter symbols you’ll win a whopping 20 additional free spins!

Jackpot and How To Win

One of the biggest pet peeves I have when it comes to Pragmatic Play video slots is that many of their machines have a win cap that’s far lower than the total maximum win the machine’s capable of producing.

Of course, online casinos need to know how much financial exposure they’re liable for with every game they offer – but with many game developers (including Pragmatic, themselves), releasing video slots with win-potential of 50,000X+, I was surprised when I saw that the software provider decided to cap the maximum win in Wild West Gold to just 6,750X your bet.

Of course, hitting a 6,750X win is something no player would turn their nose up at – but the reality is, Wild West Gold is capable of producing wins far in excess than this; the max win is achieved by landing 5X sticky wilds on the middle three reels and the top-paying symbol on the right-hand-side and left-hand-side of the reels.

How I Landed A Big Win

Now I didn’t manage to get near the jackpot, but this big win came within just a few minutes of starting my review.

I was delighted to see the scatter symbols land within the first few spins, which triggered the 8 Free Spins bonus I described earlier. The first few free spins didn’t actually earn anything, but then a few of them started to return bigger numbers. I also earned an additional 4 free spins during the bonus round, all of which added up to the 13,760 Euro return above.

A very nice result I’m sure you’ll agree, but could it have been better?

The issue I have with Wild West Gold, is that, during the free spins bonus, for example, you could get this setup more than once – but if you do get it, the game stops, as the max win cap will come into play. It’s not a major issue given that the max win is still much greater than many video slots we see today – but I’d like to have seen Pragmatic set the bar a bit higher.

Software

One of the main things I wanted to look at when writing this Wild West Gold slot review was how well the game performed on mobile devices. With more players using mobile casino sites than ever before, most software providers are now pushing out content that’s heavily mobile-optimized.

Thankfully, this is one of the areas where I’ve found Pragmatic Play tend to excel; virtually all of their HTML5 slots play really nicely on mobiles, and I tested Wild West Gold out extensively from my mobile devices.

The gameplay, I found, was smooth, and graphics rendered in crisp HD – even when I was playing on my 4G connection instead of WIFI. I must have played over 300 spins from my mobile device while testing Wild West Gold out, and while there were short periods of lag, I think this was down to my internet connection more than anything else if I’m honest.

The game looks great on mobile devices, and I really like how Pragmatic Play has managed to keep the theme of the slot while ensuring it’s dialled back – graphically – enough to render well on mobile devices.

I can’t fault Wild West Gold here; it plays fantastically on both mobile devices and desktop computers/laptops, so no matter what device you’ll be playing from you can expect a reliable, stress-free and quality gaming experience.

Summary

In order to write this Wild West Gold slot review I spent a fair amount of time playing the game – trying it out – and I’d say I spent a good 50-60 minutes trying it out in demo mode to get a true idea of how it plays out. I’ll be honest – while it certainly has its merits, one thing that I did notice right away was that Wild West Gold has a pretty dead base-game. What’s more, when it did produce wins, many of these wins were well below my total bet – so, in essence, a losing spin.

That being said, I’m fully aware – as you should be, if you choose to play Wild West Gold for yourself – the game is almost entirely centred around the free spins bonus round, and you’re very unlikely to find yourself scoring any significant hits within the base-game.

The free spins bonus uses a proven mechanic – sticky wilds with multipliers – and while it’s not quite up to the levels we see in NetEnt’s Dead or Alive II, Pragmatic has developed Wild West Gold around a math model that’s volatile enough to produce some big wins. But when you consider the win-potential is 6,750X your stake as opposed to Dead or Alive II’s 100,000X win-potential – well, you begin to see why players may tend to choose NetEnt’s game over Wild West Gold.

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However, I should point out that Wild West Gold is actually pretty different from Dead or Alive II; firstly, you can land sticky wild multipliers right off the bat – you don’t need to land more than one wild on a reel for the multiplier to increase – and I also really like the fact that you can land 5X sticky wilds right away, too.

There’s definitely win-potential to be found within Wild West Gold, and if you can bear to sit through a pretty uneventful base-game and wait around for the free spins bonus, you could well find yourself walking away with 1,000X+ hits.

It’s a decent game on the whole – I just think it’s a bit of shame that it lives its life in the shadow of DOA II. Still, I enjoyed playing it – and it’s a great release from Pragmatic, so I’ve got to give credit where credit’s due.

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Alex Smith

Alex has worked in the iGaming industry for more than 8 years. He's an expert at crafting in-depth, impartial reviews - and covers everything from slots and casinos to sportsbooks and game guides. In his spare time, he likes to pick up a guitar - and he's currently (trying) to learn Chinese!