Most Wanted: Slot Overview

Landing on a real-world most wanted list is usually a sign you should rethink a few of those life decisions. Getting onto a fictional one, though, is more like earning peak outlaw bragging rights. That imaginary kind is exactly what casino game designer TrueLab is going for with its online slot, Most Wanted. Here, players step into a Wild West setting built around scatter-paying wins and multiplier symbols that look and feel extremely close to Pragmatic Play’s Gate of Olympus 1000, aka Starlight Princess 1000. In truth, Most Wanted is almost a one-to-one match.

Visually, at least, it takes a different route, swapping Ancient Greece or an anime-style fantasy for a frontier backdrop. The artwork is solid enough but hardly groundbreaking, showing a no-nonsense gunslinger beside the reels in a dusty Western town. It’s the kind of scenery seen in countless films, novels, and—naturally—online slots. Perfectly fine to look at, just not especially inventive.

The same can be said for the mechanics, which feel lifted straight from Pragmatic Play and dropped into this highly volatile slot with a 96.06% RTP. The grid runs on 6-columns with 5 rows each, and a payout is formed whenever 8 or more matching symbols land anywhere. Stakes range from 20 c to $/€200 per spin, and there’s both a bonus bet and a bonus buy option for players looking to speed up the path to free spins.

The cascade mechanic removes winning symbols from the grid and refills the space as new symbols fall in from above. If the drop creates another win, the cascade repeats, stopping only when no further win appears. In the paytable, Most wanted includes 3 low, 3 mid, and 3 high-value symbols. Low pays come from dollar-sign coins, the mids are a knife, a bottle, and dynamite, while the top symbols are a pistol, a shotgun, and a male character. Landing 8 matching symbols anywhere returns 0.25 to 10 times the bet, while hitting 12+ in a combo pays 2 to 50 times the bet. As with the game it mirrors, Most Wanted doesn’t have wild symbols.

Most Wanted: Slot Features

Most Wanted brings in a familiar, well-tested feature set. These include cascades, multiplier symbols, free spins with a running total multiplier, a bonus bet, and a buy bonus.

Bounty Multipliers

On any spin, Bounty Multipliers with values of x2 to x1,000 can appear. In the base game, once winning cascades finish, any Bounty Multipliers on the screen add their values together and the combined amount is applied to the total win.

Manhunt Bonus

Hitting 4, 5, or 6 scatters in the base game triggers 15 free spins along with a payout of 3x, 5x, or 100x the bet, respectively. While the feature is running, landing 3 or more scatters grants an extra +5 free spins. During the bonus, when a Bounty Multiplier symbol lands and the spin produces a win, the multiplier value is added to a total multiplier. For the full duration of the Manhunt Bonus, whenever a new multiplier symbol lands and results in a win, the total multiplier is also used to multiply that win. If multiple multiplier symbols land, their values are added to the total multiplier and then applied to the payout. The total multiplier only comes into play if another multiplier drops onto the grid and there is a hit. The total multiplier is saved between spins.

Bonus Bet & Bonus Buy

Turning on the bonus bet raises the stake increases by 25%, providing double the chance of triggering free spins. There was no information provided on whether the bonus bet affects RTP. Using the Buy Bonus button lets players purchase direct access to the Manhunt Bonus for 100x the bet. When the bonus is bought, the RTP is 96.18%.

Most Wanted: Slot Verdict

You can tell a studio has hit the big time when it feels like every other developer (and their dog) is busy cloning its ideas, hoping a little success will transfer by proximity. In Most Wanted, some of that appeal does carry over, since it delivers a fun Western-flavoured take on Gates of Olympus 1000. Whatever the ethical grey areas, TrueLab may be onto a workable formula. With the Western theme being perennially popular, plus the still-rising appeal of scatter-paying mechanics, Most Wanted could easily attract a solid following.

Still, the copying is hard to ignore. Did it really need to be this thorough? Couldn’t TrueLab have introduced something new, or at least a small tweak to add even a hint of originality? Apparently not. Whether that’s because the team didn’t see a need to reinvent anything, wanted to stay close to Gates for the cool-by-association effect, or simply didn’t feel like straying from the template, it’s impossible to know. Setting that frustration aside, Most Wanted is a scatter-paying slot with a decent entertainment factor. The maximum win is 15,000x the bet, and the game info states this was hit 345 times during 10 billion rounds, which is actually a respectable figure in relative terms. The Western theme also does a good job of dressing up the “borrowed” mechanics.

Honestly, what TrueLab has done is a bit cheeky, isn’t it? Repackaging someone else’s game so closely (surface changes aside). They’re not the only studio to do it, but the creativity score here is basically zero, and even the theme is fairly standard. Even so, if you overlook the drawbacks—or squint hard enough to pretend they’re not there—Most Wanted remains a playable scatter-paying slot with attractive numbers.