Day 28 - Waylanders Forge - Slot Review

On day 28, I took on Waylanders Forge from Valkyrie, a Viking-themed ways slot released this year under Engine.io. Valkyrie has been the number one studio under Engine.io recently. It’s a 6x4 grid game with an 80,085x max multiplier potential.

There are no paylines here. All symbols pay from left to right, starting from the leftmost reel, and only symbols on adjacent reels count as a valid win way. Winning symbols disappear and new ones tumble in, so one spin can chain several wins. Wild pay only applies if there are wilds on every reel.

The special symbols are what make the base game interesting. The Expanding Wild slides down its reel until it hits the bottom, another wild or any special symbol. The Multiplier Wild multiplies the wins it connects with, and its values go 2x, 3x, 5x, 7x, 10x, 25x, 50x, 100x, 200x, 500x and 1000x. The Wild Bomb turns into a 2x2 block of wilds, and the Golden Wild Bomb turns into a 3x3 block. The Split symbol splits every paying symbol on the board, and each split adds 1 extra way to that symbol. The Royal Remover wipes all the royal symbols off the board, which leaves more room for the premium ones. The Wild Star turns all symbols of one kind into wilds. The Mystery symbol reveals every mystery on the board as the same random symbol. And then there’s the Max Wild, which counts as a wild and takes you straight to the max win the moment it lands a win.

The free spins are where the game gets its name. You always get 10 free spins, but the number of scatters you land decides which version you get.

3 scatters (Forge Spins): every symbol hit fills a symbol bar. When the bar is full, it resets and your lowest paying symbol upgrades into a random better one, and that upgrade stays for the tumbles and spins that follow. 4 scatters (Wayfinders Blessing): every time a symbol makes a winning connection, its multiplier doubles. They all start at 1x, and wilds don’t carry a multiplier. 5 scatters (Mine Shaft Tumble): every winning connection makes a random reel grow taller by 1, up to 8 ways per reel. Scatters can’t drop here, but 5 tumbles in a row on one spin give you +1 free spin, and that reward grows by +1 each time you get it. 6 scatters (The Soul Forge): this switches on a multiplier grid. Every symbol hit doubles the multiplier sitting on its position, and the grid starts at 1x.

In Wayfinders Blessing and The Soul Forge, landing 3 scatters during the bonus adds 5 extra spins.

The plan for winning is to keep the wins tumbling. A long chain of tumbles is what fills the symbol bar, doubles the multipliers, grows the reels and builds the grid, so you want the same symbols to keep connecting. And if you ever see the Max Wild and it connects, BOOOM!

During my 1000 spins, I triggered the Forge Spins 5 times and the Wayfinders Blessing once. For a 1000 spins run that’s a decent hit rate, since you get a shot at a bonus round roughly once every 200 spins or better. The best bonus paid 150x, and it came in the first 100 spins. In the base game, I hit a sexy 292x, which was the highlight of the session.

Overall I lost, but I saw the game’s potential. This is another slot with real juice in it.

1000 SPINS APPROVED!