Icy Wilds Slot – Free Demo

Fifty fixed lines under the Ice Princess

Booting up this slot, oh boy, I didn't grasp what was what, so I abandoned reading the game rules and just plunged right into it, expecting to discover along the route. I played it at a stake of 1.50 per spin from a starting balance of 200.00. Icy Wilds has a conventional layout of 5 reels, 4 rows and 50 pay lines. The 50 lines are fixed, and wins pay left to right on adjacent reels starting from the leftmost reel. At least when glancing at the features, it's fairly remote from a classic slot, though. Only the highest win on each payline is paid, and wins on different paylines are added together.

Composing this write-up turned out to be a bit of a test. There's a heap of elements going on in the game. Alongside the line wins there is a Wild symbol, the Wild Reels feature and a Free Spins round triggered by Polar Bears. Emphasis here seems to be more on amusement rather than attempting to satisfy diehard slot players, and it's a vibrant, cheerful, action-packed slot with wins that are nothing out of the usual. In my session 51 of 202 spins paid something, and 28 of those paid less than the 1.50 stake.

Crowns, ermines and a reel that freezes Wild

Symbols on the reels comprise crowns, rings, hearts, snow leopards, snow owls, ermines and the Ice Princess. The latter is the most valuable, paying 500 times the line bet. Spread over the 50 lines, 500 times the line bet comes to 10 times the total stake. The royals A, K, Q, J and 10 fill out the bottom of the paytable. Core to the game is the Wild symbol. It substitutes for everything except the Polar Bear and has its own power:

Wild Reels feature - a reel becomes Wild on the following spin if a complete stack of Crowns, Rings, Hearts, Snow Leopards, Snow Owls or Ermines lands on it. The Ice Princess also lands as a full stack, four rows high, and pays for 2 or more adjacent full stacks.

Polar Bears I never met

3 or more Polar Bears on 3 or more distinct reels grant 10 free spins. A full screen of 20 Polar Bears awards 45 free spins. Each additional Polar Bear adds 2. Free spins are played at the same bet as the spin that triggered them, and landing more Polar Bears during the round retriggers it, up to 250 free spins per feature.

The Wild Reels feature is still live during the free spins. It lands more frequently.

The Minty Take: IGT prints 96.15% for Icy Wilds, and my 202 spins without a single Polar Bear trigger handed back 34.2%. Somewhere in the gap sit ten free spins I never got to meet.

From 200.00 to 0.65 at 1.50 a spin

As you could likely tell by this write-up it's fairly a heap to keep track of here, but fortunately Icy Wilds is not as complex as it looks once you begin spinning the reels. There are some matters you need be mindful of, however. The biggest single win in my session was 9.30 on spin 109, 6.2 times the stake.

Running 202 spins at a 1.50 stake proved to be futile. I wagered 303.00 and won back 103.65, taking the balance from 200.00 down to 0.65. Owing to the lack of free spins, it only yielded 34.2% of what I bet. The balance never rose above the 200.00 it started at, and the longest run without a win lasted 15 spins.

So what is the ultimate judgement? It boils down to what kind of player you are, whether you will enjoy this game or not.