At First Glance
Ask any American casino player which are the best jackpot slots and they’d answer: “MegaJackpots®, hands down.” MegaJackpots® is the largest jackpot network powering hundreds of slot machines all over the United States. It is one of the only brands that can say that they’ve paid out $5.7 billion to date! Well, early in 2015, IGT brought this popular progressive jackpot brand across the pond to us folks in UK and Europe. They first introduced MegaJackpots into existing IGT titles, Cleopatra and Siberian Storm. One year later, they’ve further expanded the brand to Wolf Run. Read on to find out if this new Wolf Run slot is worth your buck.
Game Basics
Wolf Run has the makings of a traditional slot. The gameboard is made up of 5 reels and 40 paylines. There are 11 different game symbols with payouts ranging from 5x to 1,000x multipliers. The game accepts wagers from 40p up to £80. The odds of winning are linearly proportional to the size of your wager; the more you bet, the higher your chances of winning the prize!
For the slot geeks out there, I’ll get into the nitty-gritty technical details. MegaJackpots Wolf Run has a return to player percentage of 91.02% when the jackpot is over 500,000 and this increases to 93.04% when the jackpot passes the 1 million mark. Let me be frank with you – these aren’t favourable payout percentages at all.
The original Wolf Run (without the jackpot) had an RTP of 92.5% to 94.98%. Meanwhile, most online and mobile slot games in our casinos offer payouts north of 95%. I suppose that’s the cost of running a mega-prize jackpot. No real money game maker or casino operator can afford to be generous during base games as well as with their jackpots.
The jackpot’s seed value is £500,000. Here is how it works: every time the jackpot is won by someone, the prize pool is reset. However, the casino operators often contribute a sum of money (called “seed money”) to get the ball rolling, so that the game is more attractive to players. Most jackpots are seeded by few tens of thousands of pounds, but MegaJackpots Wolf Run starts players off with a whopping £500K!
Bonus Features
MegaJackpots Wolf Run is equipped with rather rudimentary features. There are two Wild symbol – the wolf howling at the moon and the MegaJackpots – that replaces all other symbols to complete winning paylines. Both of these wilds appear stacked, which supposedly increase your chances of getting extra wins. There’s also a Extra Spins symbol that offers five extra spins whenever you land three of them anywhere on the reels. By the way, you can win the jackpot during the extra spins rounds too.
The star feature that players come for is of course, the MegaJackpot. If you can cover all five reels with the MegaJackpots symbol at the same time, you’re in for a treat. This means that you have won the top jackpot prize.
How Does The Game Perform?
Unfortunately, the only word that comes to mind when evaluating the aesthetics of this slot is dated. It’s got these storybook-like illustrations of wolves and old Indian totems. Despite that, the game has had a loyal following since its inception in. Wolf Run is one of IGT’s all-time favorite slot games. I guess, the packaging doesn’t matter when the slot contains gargantuan prizes. However, they did not compromise the reliability of the slot and Wolf Run works perfectly on the desktop and mobile platform.
The Feature That You Should Look Out For
As mentioned above, Wolf Run is part of the ultra-popular IGT series, MegaJackpots. There are three other slots in this series – Cleopatra, Siberian Storm and Isle O Plenty. Since all four games share the progressive jackpot pool, the jackpots grow at a truly accelerated rate. Not to mention, the same jackpot prize pool is hosted in tens of casinos all across Europe (covering over 14 languages and 23 currencies), and played on both desktop and mobile platforms. With so many players, each contributing a small portion of their respective wagers, the prize pool multiplies many times over within weeks. When the game first launched, its producers predicted that the jackpot will be hit once every three months, with at least £800K.
And Finally…
I would be careful with this slot game. There’s a fabulous prize, but this may blind you from the two less favourable aspects of the game: “big wagers get higher chances of winning” and “low payout percentage on the base game”. In other words, MegaJackpots Wolf Run is for players with deeper pockets. You have to be prepared for smaller and fewer base-game payouts than usual.
As with any jackpot game, you have to be aware of the odds – only one player among millions win that coveted prize. However, while the game is new and heavily promoted, many casinos offer launch promotions such as prize draws and extra spins. It’s the best time to play MegaJackpots Wolf Run and for all you know, you’re the next MegaJackpots millionaire!
