The Wildos 2: Slot Overview

Almost two years before this review—blimey, where does the time go—Thunderkick showed off its Western flair with The Wildos, introducing a trio of masked outlaws and bringing sticky wild multipliers back into the spotlight. It wasn’t the loudest release on the market next to some rivals, but the combination of sticky wild multipliers and slick production made it a neat, enjoyable little package. Now Thunderkick has followed up with The Wildos 2, a larger, more expansive sequel that still keeps its eyes firmly on one thing: landing blazing hot sticky wild multipliers on the reels.

It’s obvious the Wildo crew hasn’t gone straight, because they’re back in custody—this time locked in a jail carriage positioned beside the game grid. The jail and the reels sit on a chugging train rolling through a dusty desert scene. On the right of the grid, a doorway marked with a dollar sign leads to a carriage the bandits break into during the bonus. In short, the layout mirrors the earlier game, only the creaky one-building town has been swapped for a rail-riding backdrop. No worries though—the Wildo lads are still as unruly as ever.

With 20 paylines running across a larger 5×4 gaming grid, wins are formed left to right starting from the leftmost reel. Before you start spinning, pick a suitable wager from 10 c to $/€100, and consider whether the Bet+ options or feature buys are worth using. Somewhat predictably (and a touch disappointing), the RTP has dipped compared to the first Wildos slot, landing at 94.19%, while the math model volatility is high.

The 3 slightly offbeat, slightly menacing Wildo characters sit at the top of the paytable, paying 15 to 20 times the bet for a 5 OAK hit. Beneath them are clubs, diamonds, spades, hearts, pocket watches, hats, and necklaces, which return 2 to 4 times the bet for a 5 OAK payline.

The Wildos 2: Slot Features

The Wildos 2 builds on the first game; in brief, its feature set includes Multiplier Wilds, a Bounty Poster feature, a free spins bonus game, a super bonus game, Bet+ ante bets, and feature buys.

Multiplier Wilds

Multiplier Wilds can appear on the three middle reels and substitute for all symbols except other wilds and scatters. These Multiplier Wilds display random multipliers, which can be Bronze (x1, x2, or x3), Silver (x5, x6, or x8) or Gold (x10, x15, or x25). When multipliers land together, their values are added.

Bounty Poster Feature

Hitting a Wildo poster symbol activates 1 of 3 modifiers:

• The Green Wildo Poster symbol adds 1 to 4 Bronze Wilds,
• The Blue Wildo Poster symbol adds 1 to 5 Silver Wilds.
• The Red Wildo Poster adds 1 to 5 Gold Wilds to reels 2-4.

Scatter symbols are not influenced. Higher-tier wild symbols may upgrade lower-tier wilds, but upgrades don’t work in reverse. Once the feature finishes, Bounty Poster symbols behave as the matching high-pay symbols. Bounty Poster symbols also cannot be covered by the wilds that get added.

Bonus Game

The bonus feature starts when 3 scatter symbols land and offers 4 options.

• Bronze Bonus with 12 free spins.
• Silver Bonus with 9 free spins.
• Gold Bonus with 6 free spins.
• Random Bonus with 6, 9, or 12 free spins and with a chance of awarding the Super Bonus.

While the feature is active, all wild types may appear, but only the selected type becomes sticky. The Super Bonus, however, awards 12 free spins with all wilds sticky. During the round, Bounty Poster symbols can land and activate, though they won’t land if there’s no possible upgrade or free wild space available. If a higher-value wild lands on a lower-value wild, the higher value applies for that spin then reverts, unless it occurs in the Super Bonus. In the Super Bonus, upgrades persist for the duration of the feature. Additional free spins are awarded for filling reels 2, 3, or 4 with Sticky Wilds, granting one-third of the original free spins amount per completed reel.

Super Bonus

The Super Bonus can be triggered by landing 2 regular scatters + 1 super scatter in the base game, and it can also be won via the random bonus option during the bonus selection. If it’s won in the base game, the pick stage is skipped and the round begins straight away.

Bet+ and Feature Buys

There are two Bet+ choices: Bonus Boost, which makes each spin 2 times more likely to trigger a bonus game for 1.5x the bet per spin, and Bonus Boost Plus, which makes each spin 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus game for 3x the bet. More choices sit in the feature buy menu, where players can purchase a random bonus, the Bronze Wild Bonus, the Silver Wild Bonus, or the Gold Wild Bonus for 100x each. The final option is the Super Bonus for 500x.

The Wildos 2: Slot Verdict

Even with some familiar ideas, The Wildos didn’t really try to go toe-to-toe with the heavyweight Western sticky-wild titles like NetEnt’s Dead or Alive 2, instead leaning into cartoonish antics while keeping its win potential more restrained. In that sense, The Wildos felt closer to something like Pragmatic Play’s The Dog House, and it had plenty going for it. With the sequel, Thunderkick has kept many of the original’s core concepts but has turned up the dial, resulting in a game that’s more involved than before. It’s not truly complicated, but compared to The Wildos, there are more rules and extra elements that need to align to hit those top-tier moments.

That peak moment would likely be plastering the middle three reels with sticky Gold wilds during free spins, though The Wildos 2 can still deliver thrills without reaching quite that far. One small—maybe not so small—constraint is that when several multipliers contribute to the same win, they’re added together before being applied, rather than multiplied like they were previously. The maximum combined multiplier is also lower at x75. Potentially offsetting that is the new Bounty Poster feature, which can throw up to 5 Gold Wilds onto the reels, making those posters a seriously sought-after sight. And once you’re in the bonus game, every part of the setup becomes even more tempting—sticky wild suspense does that.

If you go looking for drawbacks, players who enjoyed the clean, straightforward nature of the original (or who prefer its higher RTP) may find the added rules in The Wildos 2 a bit of a hassle. Still, none of it is hard to grasp, and the increased win potential of 10,000x the bet along with an intriguing mechanical tweak makes it a ride worth choo-choo checking out for Wildos fans.