The Wild Machine Slot – Free Demo

Forty lines, two mechanics and a 30.6% return

By Pragmatic Play, The Wild Machine is a 5-reel, 5-row video slot with 40 paylines, and it is playable on all devices from 0.20 to 100. Wins pay left to right along those lines. It has no conventional free spins round in the sense that one starts a bonus by getting scatter symbols to be granted a fixed number of free spins. For this review I played 360 spins at a 240.00 stake, starting from a balance of 100,000.00. Instead it contains two mechanics - Random Wild Spin and Wonder Wheel. Those 360 spins wagered 86,400.00 and won back 26,472.00, a session return of 30.6%.

The low value symbols are depicted by card suits, while the top-tier symbols comprise books and the Professor. The Bottle, Bag, Compass and Key fill the middle of the paytable below the Book, and five of a kind in any of the four suits pays 2.5x the stake. The highest value is the Professor, valued 25x for 5 of a kind, and there is also a Wild symbol that pays like the Professor. On spin 40 of my session the base game paid a 3.8x hit, 912.00 from the 240.00 stake, and 76 of the 360 spins paid something, 39 of them less than the stake.

When the Professor pulls the lever

The Professor can pull the lever on any base game spin to trigger the Random Wild Spin, and the layout then turns 1-3-5-7-5-3-1 for that spin. That layout has 7 reels and keeps 40 paylines, so a line can run to 7 of a kind. Reels 1, 4 and 7 are filled with Wilds. Seven Professors or Wilds on a line pay 175x the stake, and seven Books pay 50x.

Thirty Wonder Wheel sections, one visit on spin 303

There are 30 sections on the Wonder Wheel, and the player can trigger the wheel by getting 3 Scatters on reels 2, 3 and 4. In my 360 spins the three Scatters arrived once, on spin 303.

When the wheel spins, it randomly stops on one of 25 instant prize sections or one of 5 free spins sections, but one spin cannot award both. A wheel spin that lands on instant prizes can collect up to five of them.

When a free spins section is hit, the mechanic starts as either Gold Foundry Free Spins or Diamond Forge Free Spins. My one wheel went to Gold Foundry. Gold Foundry Free Spins is 8 spins on the 5x5 layout, and during every spin in Gold Foundry, 2 to 5 random reels become completely wild. Those 8 spins paid 384.00, 1.6x the stake and 1% of everything the session won. Diamond Forge Free Spins is 5 spins on the 1-3-5-7-5-3-1 layout.

Reels 1, 4 and 7 are always wild in Diamond Forge. Any new Wilds that land stay sticky for the entire round, and neither round can be retriggered. Diamond Forge did not come up in my session.

Minty’s Expert Conclusion: The 96.52% on the label met a 30.6% return over my 360 spins, and the feature everyone waits for chipped in 1.6x of it. The Gold Foundry wheel paid less than the 3.8x base-game hit on spin 40. Losing to a single line is quite a thing for the headline feature.

Down to 40,072 with the best hit outside the bonus

The Wild Machine is a little baffling at first. My balance peaked at 100,720.00 on spin 6 and finished at its lowest point, 40,072.00. It needs some while to grasp what's happening with the mechanics, and the base game is not fun at all, having no upside to speak of. The biggest win of my session, 5,280.00 or 22.0x the stake, came from the base game on spin 270. Instead players are reliant on the Wonder Wheel, most crucially the free spins sections, in hope to obtain some additional wilds. The longest run without a win lasted 18 spins, ending on spin 144. That appears to be the main hope of having a respectable win.