The Wild Life Extreme Slot – Free Demo

Five fixed lines that pay from both ends

The Wild Life Extreme is a slot full of vitality. It extends The Wild Life, the earlier IGT machine. It seeks to recapture the allure of the savannah, and all of this has been packed into IGT's The Wild Life Extreme. Elephant King is another IGT five-reeler on the same African theme.

The game begins with a default 5-reel, 3-row layout with 5 fixed paylines that can be broadened by its features. Line wins are multiplied by the coin value on the winning line, and coinciding wins on separate lines are added together. Mathematically, the game carries rather less muscle. My 320 spins at 5.00 a spin put 1,600.00 through it and returned 1,196.00. RTP rests at 94.00%, and volatility is a moderate 3 out of 5.

The lioness heads a savannah paytable

The top symbols are the creatures of the grasslands, and the lioness heads the paytable with 500 coins for five of a kind. Elephant, rhino, giraffe and zebra sit beneath it, with A, K, Q and J filling out the low end.

There is one wild, and it is the lion Wild. That restriction holds in the Free Spins Bonus as well. This wild appears on reels 2, 3 and 4 only. It substitutes for any symbol except the Bonus Scatter, and when these wilds enter a line win, they expand over the entire reel for that spin. One captured base spin at the 5.00 stake paid 30.00 with two lion reels expanded, and the balance stood at 975.00 after it.

Two ways for a reel to turn wild

In keeping with the theme comes a brief list of features, and during any base game spin the screen may shake and reveal 1 to 3 full reel wilds on reels 2 to 4. Those arrive independently of the expanding wilds, which turn a reel wild only when a Wild takes part in a line win. Line wins pay both ways, left to right and right to left, from the far-left or far-right reel on consecutive reels. Bonus wins are added to the line wins rather than replacing them. Only the highest win per line pays. Five of a kind is paid once.

Land 3, 4 or 5 Bonus Scatters anywhere and you trigger the Free Spins Bonus. The scatters count anywhere on the reels rather than on a payline. That awards 10, 15 or 20 free spins respectively, and the round is played on a 4x5 grid with 10 paylines and different reels. That doubles the number of lines in play for the round. Here an expanded wild reel becomes sticky and remains wild for the remainder of the round, and the bonus cannot be retriggered. Wild reels therefore build up as the round runs. It plays at the triggering coin value, and there is no Bonus Buy option, so the round has to be found on the reels.

320 spins and no third Bonus Scatter

The Wild Life Extreme is not loaded with features. There are two wild features and the single bonus round. That can be a little sparse at first, but it quickly begins to make sense, and what I've discovered is that the game relies on the bonus. My balance peaked at 1,004.00 on spin 2 and never went above that again. Triggering the bonus naturally can be a real chore. The longest run without a win was 16 spins, ending on spin 25. You cannot rely on the base game to keep you afloat for too long either, and during my session of 320 spins at 5.00 a spin I never saw it at all, and ended 404.00 down on a 1,000.00 balance, a return of 74.8%. The lowest the balance got was 486.00.

Much of the RTP is likely assigned to the bonus, although there is a decent amount happening in the base game. Second best for me was 135.00 on spin 177, 27 times the stake. Then again, that is the nature of the beast, so you have to be ready for the idea of it, and the base game did pay on 86 of those 320 spins. But 48 of those returned less than the stake. Behind the top two came 85.00 on spin 182 and 70.00 on spin 277, worth 17 and 14 times the stake.

Final Minty Score: 74.8% came back over those 320 spins, and the single 290.00 on spin 192 is most of the reason it reached even that, on a game whose 94.00% payback is waiting behind a round three scatters never opened.

What the wilds do to a single spin

The Wild Life Extreme is one of those slots where the wilds can have a significant effect on the result of a spin and a session, and sticky expanded reels in the bonus, for example, can be superb when they occur. In the base game that expansion lasts the one spin and nothing carries over. My best spin was 290.00, 58 times the stake.