It’s green, it’s gold, and it’s got a Rainbow, so it must be an Irish-themed slot! This Wild SWild Riches slot title by Pragmatic Play goes further than most in ladling on the clichés by actually having a slogan on the intro screen that says “the luck of the Irish”!
Whether the Irish are luckier than any other nation (they’re not), this is the way that country and culture has been translated in the online slots world. And these titles are generally massive hits.
They tend to have a familiar set of tropes: harps, leprechauns, beer, and acoustic Celtic folk. And they tend to be focussed more around big prizes than really sophisticated graphics, narratives or gameplay.
How does this new Irish title fare?
Let’s have a look in our review of Wild Wild Riches!
This is a Pragmatic Play title. Although only founded in 2015 they already have over 250 games on the market and are rated as the 8th most popular slot provider for the UK market. Big titles like Wolf Gold (and related games), Pyramid King, and Chilli Heat have helped that success, while this game is their most popular title.
September 4th, 2020.
This game has an RTP of 96.77%, which is generous in the current market. That means that over its lifetime around 3.33% of money spent on the game should be kept as profit by the casino.
This game has an irregular reel set of 5 reels, the first two are 2 symbols high, then there are four 4-symbol reels. This gives 576 pay lines.
Themes are: Irish, Celtic, mysticism, magical worlds, and green.
Yes! You can play Wild Wild Riches on any device that supports JavaScript and HTML5.
The variance here is high. High variance games are designed to pay out bigger prizes, but players have to be ready to wait longer between wins.
You can stake from 25p to £125 on this game. Make sure you never stake more than you can afford to lose. The top prize is a 1,000-times stake.
Yes, free spins are the main bonus round, and there are numerous other extra features including wilds, locking and holding, and bonus bets. There are extra wilds and extra jackpot symbols worth up to 500-times stake in free spins.
The bonus bet adds a 20% surcharge to your bet to deliver more wilds.
While Irish games are generally simple, this title does have some sophisticated and unusual gameplay features.
The controls are standard though, with a spin button flanked by plus and minus controls for your betting, and an autoplay control.
Information, menus, and sound controls are on the left of the screen.
The pay table opens with card symbols, which pay a maximum of 0.6-times stake for five spades. Then we have mushrooms, pipes, horseshoes, harps, and a pint of beer that pays 8-times stake for a full house.
Wilds sub in for everything except the bonus.
A Money Collect symbol appears on the big reels. The symbol has a multiplier value and can form winning combinations across the reels with the help of wilds. These can add up to the jackpot maximum of 500-times stake.
The free spins are awarded wilds and the bonus symbol. During the round, you can collect the money symbols.
Ante bet increases bets by 20% and increases the chance of getting wilds.
We don’t always love Irish-themed games. They can feel a bit tired and dated, and although we’re not Irish we do wonder how the people of that country feel about this set of clichés and stereotypes becoming such widely used cultural artefacts.
Wild Wild Riches does better than most of these titles though.
First of all, it avoids some of the worst clichés of the genre – though by no means all – and it doesn’t over-simply things.
It still delivers the big prizes that are the most enduring feature of Luck of the Irish games though.
From the reel set-up to a nice set of bonus features, Wild Wild Riches delivers surprises and novelty. The design is good and pretty sophisticated for this genre, and the music… well, you can always turn it off.
Pragmatic Play have blazed quite a trail in their first five years, and titles like this promise an even brighter future.