Wild Unicorns: Slot Overview

Unicorns are a familiar idea today, yet it can be a bit of a surprise to learn how far their story stretches back. According to what the Internet tells us, the earliest unicorn description in Greek writing is credited to the historian Ctesias (c. 400 BCE), who wrote of a white creature, horse-sized, with blue eyes and a single horn on its forehead measuring one cubit. Britannica.com is the source for that detail, and it also notes, ‘The actual animal behind Ctesias’s description was probably the Indian rhinoceros.

Still, it’s pleasant to indulge the fantasy, and players who want to shut their eyes and picture a magical realm might find a spark of it in Wild Unicorns from developer Big Time Gaming. Wild Unicorns heads deep into a place where fantasy almost feels real, as players roam a radiant forest of towering trees and sunbeams cutting through the canopy, with butterflies drifting by and a stone trail leading… somewhere enchanted, surely. The whole presentation is wonderfully spellbinding, and after the last few BTG games – Max Megaways 2, Big Bad Bison Megaways, Vegas Rush, etc. – it’s a bit of a jolt. Not in a negative way, more that it’s unexpected to see this softer side of the studio, and in such crisp detail as well.

To clear things up right away, Wild Unicorns isn’t a Megaways-powered online slot. It is, though, built on a 6-reel grid with 4 rows of symbols and 4,096 ways to win. Any win sets off the reaction mechanic, which removes winning symbols from the reels so new symbols can tumble down into the gaps. Using a highly volatile math model, the title offers an overall RTP of 96.53%, or 96.55% when the bonus buy is used. With or without purchasing the bonus, players can choose a base bet from 20 p/c to $/€20.

BTG’s fondness for gem-like card royals is on display again, with the familiar 9-A ranks acting as the low-paying symbols. The higher pays come from a four-leaf clover, a horseshoe, a mushroom, and a diamond. Diamonds can pay from 2 OAK or more, while the others require at least 3 to form a win. Land a 6-of-a-kind winning way and Wild Unicorns returns 0.2x to 0.25x for the royals and 0.3 to 5 times the bet for the premium symbols.

Wild Unicorns: Slot Features

Supporting those winning ways is the Wild Unicorns wild symbol, which replaces standard pay symbols and ties into the Unicorn feature. Alongside that, there are free spins with a climbing win multiplier, the Win Exchange, and a bonus buy option.

Wild

Wilds replace all symbols apart from scatters and Unicorns. Every Unicorn that lands moves up, down, left, or right, adding wilds in all available positions in the direction it travels, except on reels 1 and 6. Wilds also only show up on the four central reels. Up to 3 of the added wilds can be a Multiplier Wild, carrying values of up to x10. Any win involving a Multiplier Wild is boosted by the multiplier shown.

Free Spins

Scatter symbols land only on reels 1 and 2. Hitting 2 scatters grants 8 free spins, plus 4 extra free spins for each scatter after the second. An unlimited win multiplier runs throughout free spins. It starts at x1 and increases by +1 after each reaction. Landing 2 scatters in any position awards 4 more free spins, plus 2 additional free spins for each scatter beyond the second. During free spins, a Unicorn is guaranteed to land on every spin.

Win Exchange & Bonus Buy

Any time players score a win of 75 times the bet or higher, they can choose to exchanging 75 times the bet for 8 free spins. If the win lands between 25 and 75 times the bet, players can gamble the amount for a shot at 8 free spins via a red and green segmented wheel. Alternatively, using the bonus buy, players can purchase 8 free spins for 75 times their bet.

Wild Unicorns: Slot Verdict

When you spend long enough reviewing similar releases again and again, something genuinely unexpected can feel like snapping awake from a heavy sleep and getting smacked in the face with a wet fish. Wild Unicorns arrived out of the blue, showing a side of Big Time Gaming few would have predicted. If you dig through the back catalogue you can find tiny hints. Wild Flower and Castle of Terror have the faintest strands of connection, though that might just be us spotting patterns we want to see, like a slot-review version of pareidolia.

However we found ourselves in this corner of the forest, it’s certainly a beautiful one. In fact, the atmosphere is so strong that some players may choose Wild Unicorns for the theme as much as, or even more than, anything else. Feature-wise, it’s not doing anything wildly groundbreaking, especially by the lofty standards Big Time Gaming has set. Still, spreading wilds across the middle three reels isn’t exactly headline material, but it gains extra punch thanks to the huge number of ways to win instead of depending on a small set of paylines. When a Unicorn does appear, there’s a greater urge to see it dash horizontally rather than vertically to pull more of the grid into action. It’s also a plus that Unicorns are guaranteed on every free spin where they show up consistently, though the multiplier version is much harder to come by.

Once the sparkle fades, the overall impression lands in a similar place to the Big Bad Bison review: not bad, even very enjoyable in moments, but not close to being Big Time Gaming’s strongest or most defining release. Fans of unicorns, on the other hand, will likely be right at home.