Play Wild West for Free

The good old Wild West: where humankind met its final frontier, where outlaws ruled the arid dessert expanses, where disease ruled and intense heat were rife, where everyone gambled away their money and drank themselves into ditches. Did we say the “good” old Wild West. Maybe we went the absolutely dreadful Wild West!

Of course, all of our ideas about the western frontier of the American Colonies are slightly exaggerated by legends of Billy the Kid and Jesse James that are strung through stories, films, and even video games. Even so, we'd rather not have been around in those days, for the sole reason that they didn't even have any broadband for us to play slot machines. Savages.

This slot machine by Amaya software gives players the chance to catch a glimpse of just what it was like. The whole game screen presents a simple cartoon scene of a dead-end town in the middle of the desert, showing three reels that are filled with symbols depicting classic western props. There are sheriff badges, piles of gold, and loads of bottles of hooch.

The graphics of this slot machine stand out, and not necessarily in a good way. While aesthetic quality always comes down to personal taste, it has to be said that the two dimensional nature of this Wild West game does make it look quite primitive, almost childlike.

Of course, most 3-reel games like this tend to put the gameplay before superficial matters such as design but, then again, the design does detract a bit from the ease of play; that is because it is quite difficult to understand the game's messy paytable.

The payout schedule of this slot machine may be a bit confusing to the uninitiated, but spinners should soon get their head around what it all means. First of all, players should know that the reels can be spun with either 1, 2, or 3 coins placed as a wager with the following values: 0.01, 0.05, 0.25, 1.00, 2.00 and 5.00 credits.

The amount of money that you can win as a reward in relation to the total bet doesn't necessarily get higher if you play with 3 coins as oppose to 1 or 2. You will notice from the paytable that most prize amounts in the “2nd Coin” column are doubled while the prizes in the “3rd Coin” column are tripled.

The only actual benefit of playing with all 3 coins comes when it gets to the games highest jackpot, because finding three matching sheriff badges on the reels will award a 4,000 coin prize – four times the size of the same jackpot when only 1 coin is placed.

You can study all of the potential returns with their respective winning combinations in the table below:

As you can see, this paytable is a bit convoluted with all sorts of different combinations of icons and colours that will pay back a prize. On the positive side, this simply means more ways to bag a winner!

Being a 3-reel slot machine, this Wild West game from Amaya is not going to offer any particularly mind-blowing bonus features. However, players will be able to benefit from the game's wild icon – depicted by the sheriff's badge. This special symbol will substitute for any other icon on the reels, doubling the win whenever it completes a win.

Wild West is not going to wow many punters out there with its simple design and generic theme. However, the game is certainly worth a punt if you are a fan of retro gameplay and are growing tired of the same old fruit machine set-up.