It’s becoming eerie now that yet another software developer is transporting users to a dystopian future. These kinds of games seem to be on the rise, to the point where you have to question… Is there anything that these service providers know but aren’t disclosing? Or, to paraphrase a popular conspiracy theory, are they using their games as a covert means of warning the public at large? In open sight; concealed in plain view. Perhaps; probably not. It’s obvious that in Peter & Sons’ slot Wild 1, players are sent to a futuristic setting where, as is so often the case, everything has gone wrong and humanity has been reduced to a primitive condition of existence.
As far as dystopian scenarios go, the moniker “the grand collapse” for the black swan catastrophe depicted in Wild 1 is perfect. New conflicts waged on old highways, vintage machinery worshipped as deities, and similar themes populate P&S’s imagined future. This gives players access to a 6×4 game grid with 4,096 possible configurations in a rusting auto graveyard. A rock-heavy soundtrack gives off a honky tonk, cruising across the desert atmosphere, and a grizzly bearded, turquoise-skinned man is jammin’ on a ‘geetar’ next to the reels. Even if Wild 1’s tone is post-apocalyptic, it’s still Peter & Sons, therefore the animation style makes everything appear more floppy than scary.
Peter & Sons has made it easy to take part in the apocalypse from any device, with bets ranging from 20 pence to £/€50. The RTP of 96% is about par for the course, and the hit rate of 26.79 percent is about normal, with a minimum of three matching symbols and a maximum of five matching symbols needed to win. We’ll get to the exciting action in a moment, but before you get too excited, know that even while the potential seems tremendous, what was achieved in simulated spins does knock expectation down a notch or two.
For the time being, let’s take a look at the paytable, which has low-paying symbols like spades, clubs, diamonds, crosses, and hearts, and high-paying symbols like five characters on hot rods. Six of a kind pays low (0.3 to 0.5 times the wager) or high (0.8 to 3 times the wager) depending on the pay table. Let’s take a look at the game’s many wilds, which occur in connection with the game’s characteristics.
Slot Machine Features, Part 1
For Wild 1, we created our unique Wild Reel to run along the top of the main grid and cascade several wild symbols down into the main playing area. Depending on the active level, the Wild Reel will alternate between displaying regular Wilds, Unbreakable Wilds, Expanding Wilds, blank spaces, and Multiplier Wilds with each spin.
Cascades
Cascade eliminates winning combinations from the reels and replaces them with symbols that descend from above to create new winning combinations. Wild symbols on the Wild Reel drop into empty spaces underneath them before ordinary symbols on the main reels do when a cascade occurs.
Nuclear Fuse
Exploding to clear a 3×3 block of symbols and set off still another cascade when two scatters appear at the conclusion of a sequence. Players advance a level following the detonation of two bombs:
Wild Reels may or may not appear on the first level.
Wilds, Multiplier Wilds, and empty spaces are all acceptable on the Wild Reel of Level 1.
Wilds, Unbreakable Wilds, Multiplier Wilds, and even blanks might appear on the second-tier Wild Reel.
Wilds, Unbreakable Wilds, Expanding Wilds, Wild Multipliers, and blanks are all acceptable on a Wild Reel of Tier 3 difficulty.
Wild 1 is only one of numerous different wild kinds that can replace other, non-wild symbols in a winning combination. Wild symbols perform as advertised, Expanding Wilds grow to fill a whole reel, and Unbreakable Wilds stay put during cascades. Multiplier wilds, which can increase a win by up to ten times, are possible.
Bonus Turns
If you get three scatters, you’ll unlock the bonus game and receive 10 free spins. One additional free spin is awarded for every scatter that can be seen. Wild symbols emerge more frequently during free spins because the Wild Reel is “Superpowered.” If you get two scatters, the Bomb feature is activated, and if you get three or more scatters, you get an additional ten free spins.
Judgment: Wild Card 1 Slot
Wild 1 has an interesting visual style and solid sound effects, but it didn’t immediately hook us as Peter & Sons’ other slot machines had in the past. There was a lack of depth to the studio’s post-apocalyptic vision. Yes, P&S have chosen to portray the collapse of civilization (or “grand collapse,” as they like to call it) in a more lighthearted, humorous way. Wild 1 lacks the visceral gut-punch found in similarly themed games like Cash Truck, Nitropolis 3, or Mayhem, much like Kaiser’s bobbing around in no man’s land irreverent attitude.
But then again, this is Peter & Sons, and they’re not the kind to follow the crowd. Wild Reel–inspired ideas, which also appeared in Valkyries, appear to be a part of the group’s current experimentation with making their own thing. It didn’t take long to amass enough Bomb triggers to move up a tier, unlocking other Wild Reel varieties. To the point that the tiered system seemed unnecessary, even though it may inspire certain gamers to keep going.
What really stood out to us was how weak the game felt overall. This was in part due to the fact that P&S’s take on the end of the world was calmer and more relaxed than the competition in this slot. There were many of cascades and Wild Reel symbols falling from the sky, but they seldom led to anything noteworthy. The game’s promotional trailers also failed to excite. You’d think a company would utilize them to highlight something noteworthy, like the game’s maximum win, but they were really rather understated. When discussing the maximum payout, the paytable states that you may win up to 10,000x, yet a closer look at the regulations reveals that 5,000x has only been won once out of a billion virtual spins.
Numbers aren’t everything, and Wild 1’s are fine by industry standards, but they didn’t exactly inspire us, either. This might be because the game we examined before it, Remember Gulag, had far greater potential and a lot more favorable maximum win probability. Despite the impersonal nature of the statistics, Wild 1 is nevertheless a refreshingly original take on the post-apocalyptic genre. Wild 1, though, ultimately seemed like one of Peter & Sons’ less attractive games.
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