Rich Wilde and the Wandering City: Slot Overview

Before diving into Play’n GO’s online slot, Rich Wilde and the Wandering City, we took a moment to scour the web for a bit of context. The term ‘Wandering City’ seems to point to Ciudad de los Césares, or The City of the Caesars, a legendary location in South America. The City of the Caesars was believed to lie in the Patagonian valley somewhere between Argentina and Chile. Tales of it circulated for years, yet nobody appears to have definitively confirmed it ever existed.

So, what would make someone chase the Wandering City? One legend claims the city sat between a mountain of gold on one side and a mountain of diamond on the other. It certainly sounds like the ultimate ‘too good to be true’ story, but still, what if…? Enter the smooth adventurer Rich Wilde, who has managed what other explorers couldn’t and uncovered the mythical city. A quick note on Rich: the man is ageing like a fine wine. Remember his youthful charm in Pearls of India? With every new release, he’s looking a little more salt-and-pepper and middle-aged. Given how quickly Play’n GO crank these games out, it’s easy to picture something like Rich Wilde and Retirement Village Gold turning up sooner rather than later.

For the time being, Rich is trekking across the frozen Patagonian wilds for yet another shot at striking it rich. The action takes place on a 5-reel, 3-row layout, running on an unexpected 243 ways to win. Unexpected because Rich Wilde and the Wandering City is, at heart, a ‘book of’ slot—just one that adds far more win ways and multipliers into the formula. It’s a highly volatile ride rated 9 out of 10, and the multiple RTP options are headed by a default of 96.2%. You can hunt for the Wandering City on any device, with stakes ranging from 10 p/c to $/€100.

With so many ways to win, there was never any chance a five-of-a-kind premium would pay 500x—that would have been ridiculous. Instead, five Rich symbols return 4x the bet, followed by other high-value icons like skulls, statues, and daggers. Below those sit the 9-A card royals as the lower-paying symbols. The only other standout is the diamond symbol, which triggers the game’s main feature.

Rich Wilde and the Wandering City: Slot Features

As a ‘book of’ style slot, the base game isn’t where you should expect constant fireworks, although a random multiplier can show up. The real emphasis is on the free spins bonus, where the well-known expanding pay-anywhere symbols take centre stage.

Win Multiplier

On any base or bonus game spin, there’s a chance an x2 multiplier will activate on reels 2, 3, or 4. If only one multiplier appears, it’s applied to any wins; if multiple multipliers land, their values are added together first and then applied.

Free Spins

The diamond symbol is wild, substituting for all symbols to help form wins, and it also acts as the scatter. Hitting 3, 4, or 5 diamond scatters awards 10 free spins along with a payout of 0.8, 1.6, or 4 times your stake.

Before the free spins start, a high or low pay symbol is randomly selected as the special expanding symbol for the full free spins session. After standard wins are paid, special symbols expand to cover all three cells on its reel. Special symbols only expand when they are part of a winning combination. Once expanded, these symbols don’t need to sit next to each other to form wins, instead paying like a scatter.

Finally, free spins are retrigged when 3 scatters land during the bonus. This grants +10 extra free spins, and the feature can be retriggered up to five times.

Rich Wilde and the Wandering City: Slot Verdict

Play’n GO have dressed Rich Wilde up for another ‘book of’ adventure, and thankfully they’ve done it with flair. Rich Wilde and the Wandering City not only looks every bit as polished as the best ‘book’ slots from them (or most other studios), it also plays with that familiar smooth Play’n GO feel. They could likely build this type of game in their sleep, but even so, they’ve put together Rich Wilde and the Wandering City in a way that’s tough for ‘book’ fans to ignore.

It may not reinvent the wheel, but Rich Wilde and the Wandering City does bring a couple of elements that not every ‘book’ slot includes. The most obvious is the extra ways to win, which changes the overall dynamics. It isn’t the first game to do it—BTG notably used the 243 ways setup in one of their less popular releases, Book of Gods—but it’s still far from common. That choice means the maths team had to rebalance other areas, and here it’s the symbol payouts. Those have been reduced further to account for the reel multipliers, so everyday wins in Rich Wilde and the Wandering City aren’t exactly headline material. Still, the mix of expanding symbols, ways, and multipliers can align nicely, giving Rich Wilde and the Wandering City strong potential of up to 10,000x the bet. It’s not quite top-shelf for a ‘book of’ slot, but doubling the usual ceiling is enough to make a few people take notice.

Yes, Rich Wilde and the Wandering City is another ‘book’ slot, but it’s a solid one that strays from the standard template. It’s not necessarily a must-play classic, yet it offers plenty that many Ra fans will be pleased to see in an expanding symbol-driven game.