Wild West Duels Slot Review
The reels hang in a timber gallows frame on a frontier street, clapboard storefronts on one side, a saloon and a cactus on the other. Underneath that sunbaked cartoon paint, Pragmatic Play has hidden one of the meanest base paytables you’ll meet in a western: the symbols barely matter here, because the wilds do nearly all of the paying.
The numbers say as much: a 5×5 grid, 15 paylines, 96.00% RTP, high volatility and a 20,000x win cap. Where the studio’s Wild West Gold and its Megaways sequel kept the frontier simple, this one splits its bonus action three ways, closer in spirit to Bandit Megaways than to either. Three duels, each with its own idea about wilds.
How the Base Game Pays
Wins pay left to right on adjacent reels from the leftmost, across 15 fixed paylines, and only the highest combination on each line counts. Wins on multiple lines add together. It’s a conventional setup; the interest here is in what the symbols are worth and what the wild does with them.
Five character symbols and five frontier objects make up the paytable, with the pot-of-gold wild sitting at the top of it. All values are multiples of the total bet:
- Pot of Gold (WILD) or the cowboy in the green coat: 2x for three, 10x for four, 20x for five
- Cowboy with the moustache and the cowgirl in the brown hat: 1x / 5x / 10x
- Older cowboy in the blue scarf and the young cowboy in red: 0.75x / 2.5x / 5x
- Cowboy hat, boots, money bag, red bandana, wanted poster: 0.1x / 0.5x / 1x
Those object symbols pay modestly even at five of a kind, so the base game’s real work is done by the wild. It substitutes for everything except the scatters, appears on all five reels, and pays like the top character when it lines up on its own.
Expanding Wilds
Any wild that lands in the base game can randomly expand to fill its entire reel. When it does, it picks up a multiplier of anywhere from 2x to 100x, applied to every winning combination it forms part of. A full-reel wild at the top of that range is what turns an ordinary spin into something memorable.
There’s a sensible restraint in the mechanics: a wild only expands if the expansion would actually produce a win. You never get the tease of a full reel that changes nothing.
Three Scatters, Three Rounds
Alongside the wild, three separate scatter symbols each open a different free spins round: the Beer Game scatter, the Duel scatter and the Lost Relics scatter. Landing three or more of any one of them triggers its feature, and each round treats the wild differently, which is where the game earns its name.
The Beer Game
Three or more Beer Game scatters award 10 free spins. The expanding wild feature is switched off for this round, but wilds more than make up for it: every wild that lands picks up a multiplier of 2x or 3x and then stays on screen for the rest of the feature.
Those multipliers apply to all wins that connect through the wilds, and where more than one wild forms part of the same winning combination, their multipliers add together rather than multiply. A screen carrying several sticky wilds by the final spins is the round’s whole promise. The feature can’t be retriggered.
The Duel
Three or more Duel scatters also award 10 free spins, and here the expanding wild feature stays live. On top of that, at least one wild is guaranteed to land on every single spin, in a random position, with the possibility of expanding.
It’s the round most like the base game turned up a notch: consistent wilds, the full 2x to 100x expansion range in play, and a hit of spectacle every spin. Like the Beer Game, it can’t be retriggered, so what you get in those 10 spins is all there is.
Lost Relics
The third round is the strangest and the shortest. Three or more Lost Relics scatters award just 3 free spins, but before they play out you’re shown a grid of 25 shovels and asked to pick 9 of them.
Each dig collects one of two things for the spins ahead:
- Guaranteed wilds per spin: 1, 2, 3 or 5
- Multiplier value: 1x, 2x, 3x or 5x
During the round, the number of wilds you collected lands in random positions on every spin, and every win is multiplied by the total multiplier you dug up. Expanding wilds aren’t available here. A lucky dig can make three spins feel enormous; a poor one makes the round a formality. It can’t be retriggered either.
Bonus Buy
All three rounds can be bought directly from the base game, at meaningfully different prices. Whatever the game’s standard 96.00% RTP, each purchase runs at the same 96.00%, so the buy is priced for the round you want rather than punished.
- BEER GAME: 100x total bet
- DUEL: 200x total bet
- LOST RELICS: 400x total bet
The pricing is honest about the pecking order: the Beer Game’s sticky wilds cost half a Duel and a quarter of a Lost Relics dig. The shovel-pick round carries the steepest tag of the three, and after a bad dig it’s also the one most likely to leave you wishing you’d spent less.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 8/10
This is a lot of standing at the saloon window watching an empty street. The base game pays thinly and it knows it, and the one reason to ride into town is that no other western hands you three genuinely different bonus rounds instead of one feature in three costumes.
That variety is the strength: sticky wilds that stack their multipliers, a duel where a wild is promised every spin, or a shovel dig that decides your fate before the reels move. The weakness is the hard stop. Nothing retriggers, so no round can snowball, and a bad dig can end the priciest buy in the game in under a minute.
It suits players who like a long, quiet build and can take a bonus ending on schedule rather than running away with them. Anyone after frequent wins and constant movement won’t find it here. For the patient, the quiet street is the point, and the duels at the end of it pay off the wait.
Wild West Duels FAQs
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What is the RTP of Wild West Duels?
The RTP is 96.00%, and it stays at 96.00% whether you trigger the features naturally or buy any of the three bonus rounds. -
Is Wild West Duels high volatility?
Yes, it’s a high volatility game, so payouts come less often on average but with a higher chance of big wins in a short space of time. -
What is the maximum win on Wild West Duels?
The maximum win is 20,000x your bet, applied across the base game and all three features. If a round’s total win reaches the cap, the round ends immediately and the win is paid. -
How does the Lost Relics feature work?
It awards 3 free spins. Before they start, you pick 9 shovels from a grid of 25 to collect guaranteed wilds (1, 2, 3 or 5 per spin) and multipliers (1x, 2x, 3x or 5x). Those wilds then land every spin and every win is multiplied by your collected total. -
Can you buy the bonus on Wild West Duels?
Yes. The Beer Game costs 100x your total bet, the Duel costs 200x and Lost Relics costs 400x. All three buys run at the game’s standard 96.00% RTP. -
Can free spins be retriggered in Wild West Duels?
No. None of the three free spins rounds, the Beer Game, the Duel or Lost Relics, can be retriggered. Each awards a fixed number of spins. -
What is the minimum and maximum bet on Wild West Duels?
Bets run from 0.20 up to 240 per spin, with the full range available before any spin. -
When is Wild West Duels released?
Wild West Duels’ release date is 23 February 2023.
