How To Win On Wild Hike Slot - Features & Mechanics

Deep in the woods, by a crackling campfire, sits a 6x4 grid inside a mossy frame. Forming regular wins requires at least 3 matching symbols situated on neighboring reels starting from the leftmost one. The setup is free of distinct pay lines, so you only need to focus on identical images landing in succession. Payouts for individual combinations may feel stingy initially, but considering a significant number of possibilities to score a hit, it's standard for this kind of composition. The lowest rewards start at 0.2 times the bet for the shortest sequences on the low-paying symbols, up to 10 times the bet for 6-of-a-kind combinations of the top-payer.

Expanding Wild Respins

In the wild, the wolf is your friend. Not only because it heads the pay table but also brings a rewarding feature. The two middle reels of the main area are unique, as any Wild that lands on them and becomes part of a winning combination will expand to cover the entire height and award a respin. It also starts with a default X1 multiplier that increases by 1 on every consecutive win within the same streak. It's possible to land both Expanding Wilds simultaneously on reels 3 and 4, making every connecting hit become at least a 4-of-a-kind with a boost. On top of that, having two multiplier values present results in their multiplication, not addition, which becomes exponentially more attractive as they grow. 

Wild Hike Free Spins

The bonus round takes you up into the stars after scoring 3 or 4 Free Spin symbols. You start with 7 or 10 spins, respectively, and it's possible to achieve 1 extra for every Free Spin symbol landing in progress. The main (and only) change in this stage is that multipliers of Expanding Wilds are saved after each winning streak. For example, if you landed one and increased it to x5 but then had a few free spins without it, the next time it drops on the same reel, it will start from that value, not begin from x1.

Accessing the bonus round instantly is available in two formats. For a 75x buy-in, you can trigger the regular free spins, and for 150x, a game with one guaranteed Expanding Wild one a random spin.

Wild Hike On Mobile

If venturing into the woods for a refreshing hike is not within reach at the moment, you can always fire up the slot on any mobile device and experience the closeness of nature. Wild Hike runs on the newest HTML5 technology providing an uninterrupted and fluent gaming experience. The landscape view offers an identical perspective to the desktop one, with UI repositioned to the right for better access. In portrait mode, the background spans from a cozy campfire at the bottom to the night sky at the top, with the reel area situated in the middle.

Final Thoughts

While many slots revolve around animals and nature in general, featuring wolves, buffalos, rhinos, and others in their specific environment, Wild Hike focuses on the beauty of on-foot travel. Not to say that there's a lot of actual movement through the woods while playing the game, but the scene alone creates a serene atmosphere that stimulates the imagination. Nothing like a relaxing evening by the fire, enjoying the sounds of nature instead of city crowds and traffic. Design-wise, the game comes off a little different from what we usually expect of the studio. The touch is much more realistic both on the wooden low-paying symbols as well as the high-paying animals represented by an owl, a roe, a boar, a bear, and a wolf. It matches the detailed, lifelike style of the reel decorations and the backdrop. However, some singular details may feel slightly neglected or rushed, like the somewhat awkward big-win celebrations where the howling wolves' motion looks a little unnatural or the Free Spin symbol represented by a hardly-recognizable tent at first. There aren't many, though, and the overall feel efficiently covers those minimal shortcomings.

Talking about spinning and winning at their core, Wild Hike offers a maximum win potential of 20,000 times the bet. What makes such a prize achievable is a feature that has already proven its strength in the Iron Bank slot, where it was one of three main functionalities. This time, Relax Gaming zeroed in on it, undoubtedly putting in much more RTP, making it significantly more frequent and rewarding. Additionally, transforming multipliers in the bonus round into persisting is a massive boost to the anticipation and makes every triggering occurrence count. We didn't have that luxury in the heist-themed slot, where those values always started from x1 on a new free spin. The base game also feels more rewarding thanks to the feature's presence and gives us a chance for some proper wins while chasing the bonus round.

Relax Gaming takes us on a charming hike through the woods to experience the soothing closeness of nature and score big on Expanding Multiplier Wilds.