Robin Hood’s Wild Forest (Red Tiger): Overview

Everyone’s favourite outlaw is back, this time brought to you by Red Tiger in Robin Hood’s Wild Forest. As the word ‘wild’ hints, the slot leans heavily on wild symbols – four of them, to be exact. Three are characters from the legend and each carries its own modifier, and since these are the only real features on offer, you’ll be hoping they appear frequently. It may look like a cheerful jaunt through Sherwood, but appearances can mislead. What Red Tiger has put together feels like a bit of a head-scratcher – who is this game actually for? Should you pull on the green tights and head into the woods to see what’s what? Let’s find out.

Visually, Robin Hood’s Wild Forest is pleasant to look at, using rich, smooth cartoon-style artwork. The backdrop shows Robin’s woodland hideout, complete with chests and sacks spilling over with stolen gold coins. Presumably, it’s loot he hasn’t had time to hand out to the poor yet. In the middle sits a wooden-framed play area made up of 5 reels and 3 rows. It’s straightforward, running on just 10 paylines, and you’ll need to land three or more matching symbols to collect a payout. Out of the box, the game is set to a 95.68% RTP, while the math model sits around a medium level. Sadly, there’s no published hit frequency, which would have been a useful number to verify given how the test sessions played out.

In the paytable, you’ll find plenty of wilds alongside the standard symbols. At the lower end are the royal cards (10-A), displayed in a suitably Robin-esque typeface. The four higher-paying icons are a tankard of beer, Robin’s feathered cap, and a bag of gold. The top-paying symbol is a golden lion, possibly a nod to King Richard, and it awards 30 times the stake for five of a kind. There are four wilds in total – one regular wild and three character wilds. Each can substitute for any pay symbol, but the character wilds also bring modifiers. Wilds can also form winning combinations, with five paying 30 times the stake.

Robin Hood’s Wild Forest (Red Tiger): Features

There are no free spins or bonus rounds to hunt for in this one. Every feature in Robin Hood’s Wild Forest is tied to the character wild symbols. Here’s what each of the three character symbols does and how their special effects work.

Maid Marian focuses on spreading the love. When she appears, she blows kisses across the reels, and wherever they land, those symbols become wild. The amount isn’t fixed, and Marian can randomly blow extra kisses, adding even more wilds to the reels.

Little John is the muscle of the crew, so when he lands he slams the ground and wipes out all low-paying symbols on the grid. This means only high-paying symbols remain. Then, after any wins are paid, Little John may randomly smash the ground again. This time, his hit removes all symbols that weren’t part of winning combinations or wilds. That creates a second-chance moment for something better to drop in.

Robin Hood takes centre stage, and it’s fitting that he has the strongest modifier of the three. When the Robin Hood symbol lands, he fires arrows at random high-paying symbols, locking them in place and triggering a respin. Any character symbols or wilds created by Maid Marian are also locked in position. If additional symbols of the same type land, they lock too and another respin is triggered. This keeps going until no more of the required symbol appears. However, randomly, if a respin occurs where no new locked symbols land, Robin may shoot fresh arrows to add one or more symbols of the locked type, allowing the respins to continue.

The ideal situation is seeing all three character wild symbols land at the same time. When that happens, their features activate in a fixed sequence – starting with Maid Marian, then Little John, and ending with Robin Hood.

Robin Hood’s Wild Forest (Red Tiger): Verdict

Robin Hood’s Wild Forest is an attractive, charming slot where the famous characters from the story pop up to alter your spins. It delivers some light-hearted entertainment, though perhaps it’s a little too gentle. Under the merry men theme sits a math model that can be pretty frustrating.

A big reason for that frustration is that the action only really starts once a character wild lands. Because of this, they don’t appear very often – certainly much less than a typical standard wild. For example, in the first session we went through well over a hundred spins before the first wild showed up. It was Little John, and the outcome didn’t justify the wait. By far the most impactful wild was Robin Hood, but he took a long time to arrive. When he finally did, he helped produce a decent win, yet it still didn’t feel worth the time spent getting there.

While you’re waiting for those rare wilds, you can expect plenty of dead spins, with the occasional tiny payout breaking things up. Slots can be unpredictable, of course, but consider this a warning about what a session of Robin Hood’s Wild Forest can look like.

The second issue, and what really seals the deal on its lack of appeal, is the weak potential. Even a full grid of top symbols, or wilds, pays only 300 times the stake, which isn’t going to thrill anyone except beginners. The real buzzkill is the calculated max multiplier of 977 times the stake. That simply doesn’t compensate for sitting through long stretches of low-value or empty spins. In a strange way, this is the most overachieving Robin Hood ever – he’s supposed to rob the rich, not everyone.

Red Tiger has put out a couple of low-paying slots lately, and it’s understandable that providers may want variety to suit different player types. Still, release too many like this and they risk cementing a reputation for making child friendly slots, and nobody wants that.