Wild Symbol: What a Wild Replaces and What It Never Does

A wild symbol stands in for the rest of the symbols so a combination can finish. The word covers very different behaviour, though, and the same word on two games can mean two things. Four titles on GG Panalo’s lobby show the range, using the studios’ own descriptions.

Wild symbol: four kinds in four lobby slots

The Wild West Gold page and the Big Bass Bonanza page each go further on one of these.

Quick check: before spin one, find the wild line in the paytable and read it.

What a wild cannot do

Plenty of players expect a wild to replace everything. Scatters and bonus symbols are normally untouched by it, so a feature trigger has to land its own symbols.

A wild is also no guarantee. If it lands beside no matching symbols, it completes nothing, which is the usual cause of a spin that looked promising and paid zero.

Problem: two scatters and a wild show, so the feature seems close. Fix: count only the scatters, because a wild leaves them alone. A multiplier wild adds a second trap: it multiplies only the win it joined, so two wins on one spin are not both doubled unless the wild sits in each.

Sticky and expanding wilds

Two other kinds exist in the wider market: sticky wilds, which stay in place across spins, and expanding wilds, which grow to fill a reel. None of the 16 titles with a page here is recorded with either, so the paytable is the only guide.

Do not assume a game has them because another did.

Reading a wild in the feature text

Studios describe wilds in a line or two, and the wording matters. Wild West Gold’s multipliers apply to wins on its 40 lines, and when more than one wild sits on a winning line they multiply against each other, which is where its large outcomes come from. For example, a 2x and a 3x wild on one line make 6x. Lucky Neko’s wilds appear as symbols land, so the count can rise within a single spin.

Compare that with Big Bass Bonanza, where the wild does nothing for line wins and everything for the money fish: remove it and a board full of high-value fish pays nothing.

Problem: a round shows eight money fish and no fisherman. Fix: it pays nothing until a fisherman wild arrives to collect them.

Put it to use

1. Open the game and find the wild line in its paytable.
2. Try 30 spins in a demo, as a free slots demo describes, and count how often the wild shows.
3. Compare two games from the table by their feature text, not by the word wild.

The slot games list links every other page in this set. Play starts at 21.