Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws: Slot Overview

Step back into the Wild West for iSoftBet’s video slot Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws, a title that gathers up plenty of recognisable visuals and mechanics from across the genre, then blends them with a few personal tweaks to feel (at least somewhat) fresh. It also joins iSoftBet’s Xtreme Pays Series, a range built to be ‘higher than normal in volatility with the chance to win bigger.‘ Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws doesn’t promise outrageous prizes, though the returns can still be solid. To get at them, you’ll be leaning on its ‘book of’ inspired system, which appears in the base game and throughout its different free spins bonuses.

Alongside the familiar feature set, Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws carries a style that echoes NetEnt’s iconic Western slots Dead or Alive and its follow-up—take your pick. The 5-reel, 10-payline layout sits inside a worn, bullet-scarred wooden frame, set against a dusty, rough-and-ready frontier town that could be anywhere between Oklahoma and California. Wherever it is, it’s the kind of joint where the bartender’s spill leaves the counter smoking.

Optimised for any device, the stake range runs from 10 p/c per spin, rising to $/€10 per spin for players looking to bet bigger. As an Xtreme Pays release, it comes with volatility is high, and the default RTP is set at 96%. On average, around one in four spins lands a win (20.4%), paid when three or more matching symbols connect adjacently along one of the 10 fixed paylines.

The reels carry nine paying symbols: five are card ranks from 10 to A, while four are outlaw characters. Van Der Wilde leads the pack, paying up to 250x the stake for five of a kind. Under him are Bonney Cassidy, Buffalo Butch, and Mad Dog, delivering between 10 to 50 times the stake. And if there’s one lesson from the frontier, it’s probably to avoid anyone nicknamed Mad Dog. The only other icon you’ll see is a wild/scatter.

Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws: Slot Features

Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws leans strongly into that ‘book of’ vibe, though iSoftBet has adjusted the rules in several ways to give it its own spin. The ‘Outlaws’ symbol acts as both scatter and wild. As a wild, it substitutes for any other symbol to complete winning combinations. Any win with the scatter wild symbol causes the expanding wins feature. When this happens, the game pays the original win first, then the symbols that made up that win—excluding wilds—expand to cover all positions on the reel, followed by a fresh win check. The original win line is included again in this evaluation. If the first win involved more than one symbol type, each set expands in turn. Expanding wins are paid left to right, only on connecting paylines, starting from the leftmost reel.

Hitting 3 or more scatter symbols anywhere triggers free games. After that, a reel spins to award Van der Wilde, Bonney Cassidy, Buffalo Butch or Mad Dog Free Spins. Landing one of these bonuses grants 8 free spins and upgrades the chosen character symbol into a Super Symbol. Super Symbols always expand when they create a winning line, and they don’t need wild involvement to do so. In addition, seeing 3+ scatters during the bonus retriggers +8 free spins, while keeping the same Super Symbol that was awarded at the start.

There’s also another possibility when the reel spins after free games are triggered: instead of a character bonus, you can land Super Free Spins. This mode awards 5 Super Spins played across 4 simultaneously spinning game grids. Each grid features one character symbol that has been turned into a Super Symbol. This bonus can also be retriggered when at least 3 scatters symbols appear.

Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws: Slot Verdict

When you put all the pieces of Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws together, it comes across as a genuinely enjoyable slot. The feature set has been tweaked enough to stay engaging, and with the right luck, it can deliver worthwhile outcomes. The Wild West setting does a lot of heavy lifting with strong visuals and audio, but iSoftBet still manages to present an appealing package—even if it shares similarities with other titles.

In terms of play, there are a few key differences compared to classic ‘book of’ expanding-symbol games. In Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws, two major ones are that expanding symbols must sit next to each other on a payline, and the win must begin on the leftmost reel. You can’t rely on expansions landing on reels 2, 4, and 5 to pay out the way many traditional book slots allow. Also, if you have expanding symbols on reels 1 and 3 with a wild sitting on the bottom of reel 2, you’ll only be paid for wins that run through paylines connected by that wild, since the wild itself doesn’t expand.

Three scatters showed up fairly often, though they nearly always led to one of the outlaw free spins rounds. Super Spins, on the other hand, were much tougher to land. As the headline feature, it’s likely where you have the best shot at reaching the game’s top potential, which is 8,000x the bet. You might have hoped for more given the Xtreme Pays label, but 8,000x is still above what many standard book-style slots tend to offer.

Viewed piece by piece, Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws is made up of elements that feel very well known. Even combined, that sense of familiarity doesn’t completely disappear. Still, it delivers a lively Western mood, and the features do enough to tempt expanding-symbol fans, making Van Der Wilde & The Outlaws a worthwhile spin to see how it plays.