Wild West Duels

Western-themed slot games are nothing new to the online gaming world, and Pragmatic Play’s Wild West Duels is another addition to this category. This review aims to provide an honest and engaging critique of the game by exploring its gameplay, design, and features.

Design and Theme

Wild West Duels’ design features a dusty frontier town that looks deserted, with tumbleweeds and cacti lining the street. The soundtrack complements the theme, although the xylophone-like sounds for win count-ups can be a bit distracting. The game grid consists of a 5×5 setup with 15 paylines, and winning combinations form from the leftmost side over consecutive reels.

Gameplay

Wild West Duels is a highly volatile game, and its RTP can be found in the paytable. The game has three special symbols – Beer Game, Duel, and Lost Relics – which can trigger the game’s three bonus rounds. Three or more of these symbols need to land in view to activate their respective features.

Regular symbols include a wanted poster, necktie, drink bottle, boots, and a hat, with five different character symbols making up the high-paying symbols. The regular bag of gold wild appears on all reels, helping players to link symbols. In the Duel feature, wild symbols can randomly expand to fill the whole reel, and two gunslingers duel it out. The winning dueler adds their multiplier of x2 to x100 to the wild. Expansions only happen if at least one win will be formed.

Features

The Beer Game is triggered when three or more Beer Game scatters land in view, awarding 10 free Beer Game spins. During the Beer Game, wild beer mugs that hit have a random multiplier of x2 or x3 and remain sticky until the end of the round. Multipliers are applied to any wins they form part of, and multiple wilds add their values together. Expanding wilds are not part of this feature, and it cannot be retriggered.

The Duel feature is activated when three or more Duel scatters land in view, awarding 10 free Duel spins. During this bonus round, at least one wild symbol is guaranteed to land in a random position on each free spin, and expanding wilds are present. This feature also cannot be retrigged.

The Lost Relics feature is triggered by landing at least three Lost Relics scatters, and it awards three free spins. Before the free spins begin, players pick 9 out of 25 shovels shown on the screen to reveal guaranteed wilds or random multipliers. The picked wilds have values of 1, 2, 3, or 5, while the picked multipliers have values of x1, x2, x3, or x5. For each spin, the picked number of wilds is guaranteed to land in random positions, and each win is multiplied by the initially picked multiplier. Expanding wilds do not feature, and this feature cannot be retriggered.

Players also have the option to buy any of the three bonus rounds at 100x, 200x, or 400x the bet for the Beer Game, Duel, and Lost Relics features, respectively.

Final Verdict

In conclusion, Wild West Duels is a well-designed game with some exciting bonus features that keep players engaged. The game’s high volatility makes it appealing to players who prefer high-risk, high-reward gameplay. However, the game’s design is not particularly unique or original, and the soundtrack’s xylophone-like sounds can be distracting. Overall, Wild West Duels is a solid addition to the Western-themed slot genre.