Wolf Cub Slot – Free Demo

Still in the lobby nine years after release

Wolf Cub was first launched on February 16, 2017. I put 400 spins through it at 6.00 a spin to see how it behaves now. Unlike numerous slots of that era it never disappeared, and it's not a branded slot, so lapsed licenses were never going to be a problem. That is otherwise frequently the cause for withdrawn slots — South Park by NetEnt is one such instance. The game is NetEnt's own, and the only feature it carries is the free spins, with the Blizzard Feature running inside them. It could, of course, have fared worse than anticipated, and players might have ultimately deserted it due to meagre payouts. Of my 400 spins, 158 paid something back. But whatever the situation, it is still here. Over the run I staked 2,400.00 and got 3,966.60 back.

Wolf Cub is a 5-reel, 3-row online slot with 20 fixed bet lines. Wins form along those lines from three of a kind up. That means players are not picking their own lines. The stake comes from a Level and a Coin Value instead, and in my session Level 3 at a coin value of 0.10 read as 6.00 on the bet meter.

A theme that has been used and abused in absurdum, it's a bit difficult to keep track of all the Big Bad Wolf and Wolf Gold style slots out there. All of that can be pardoned, however, as long as a slot can pay. My balance peaked at 3,343.00, on spin 50.

The Wolf, the Bear and four wooden card suits

The premium end of the paytable is headed by the Wolf itself. Under it sit the Bear, the Moose, the Lynx and the Owl, and the four card suits share the bottom of the table. It pays 600 coins for 5 of a kind across a complete bet line. Three of a kind is enough for a paying line on every symbol in the game.

In the main game and in the free spins alike, the wild stands in for everything except the Scatter. Wilds can turn up anywhere on the reels rather than being tied to particular ones. It also pays on its own account: 100, 500 and 2,000 coins for 3, 4 and 5. The ordinary symbols do appear stacked, and that is what the free spins are built around.

Scatters that carry their own numbers

Triggering the free spins can be quite a struggle. Mine arrived once in 400 spins, on spin 206. First you have to land 3 or more Scatter symbols anywhere on the reels. That is the only route in, and it has to happen while the base game is running. The Scatter reels then spin with figures on them, and the total of every figure displayed is the number of free spins you get. One Scatter I saw in the base game carried the number 30, sitting alone on the middle reel with nothing beside it. So there is no set count.

The Blizzard Feature is in play during the free spins. It runs there and nowhere else, so the base game is plain line pays. A symbol landing completely stacked on reel 1 spreads all corresponding symbols on the other reels towards reel 1, filling in the row between them; wilds join in only when they too are completely stacked on reel 1. That's just about all there is to the free spins game, plain and straight-forward, typical old school NetEnt.

The Minty Summary: My 400 spins came back at 165.3% of what I staked, and one of them — spin 50, at 376 times the bet — is where that figure lives. Take it out of the ledger and the same run closes below the balance it started on.

Spin 50 and the other 399

My own 400 spins at 6 credits a spin returned 165.3% of what I staked. That was on the back of a lone 376x hit on spin 50 that carried the entire session. The next best hits were 44 times the stake on spin 48, then 26x on 88, 18x on 231 and 17x on 299. The free spins showed up once, on spin 206, and paid 4.6 times the stake, one per cent of everything I won. The rest came in small: 104 of the 158 paying spins returned less than the 6.00 stake.

Perhaps the timing for a slot like this was better back then. The 400 spins finished at 2,566.60 from a 1,000.00 start. Who knows. Ultra high potential, high variance slots are in high demand, and this is not one of them. But there will be numerous players pursuing them wolves anyway.