Harvest Wilds

Harvest Wilds Overview

This new slot game from the casino slots provider Hacksaw Gaming takes us to an idyllic countryside scene at the height of harvest time. The scene is one of abundant produce, including broccoli, carrots, turnips and peppers. Your job is to match these various fruit and veg icons together in matching clusters to trigger wins and build your take-home cash amount. Mechanically, you will be presented by a seven reel, 7-row grid full of symbols with a highly volatile math model and an RTP of 96.35%. The top payout available in this game is a sizeable 10,000x the stake.

Being a cluster pay game, the first feature here is the cascade bonus. Every time there is a win, this is triggered and removes all the winning symbols to replace them with a new set. This dynamic gives players more chances to form wins from the same spin. This game also has a wild multiplier sunflower bonus, a re-spin bonus, and a feature buy bonus. There is also something here called the fertilizer upgrade. There are two types of fertilizer symbols. The regular one increases the attached multiplier value of one sunflower by 1x, and the epic fertilizer increases all sunflowers by 1x. The importance of sunflowers will make sense once you read the rest of this review.

Theme and Symbols

The theme for this game is farming or being more accurate harvesting, as all of the products in this game are from the ground rather than from an animal. The game looks similar to many cluster pay games that have copied their basic look from the Candy Crush format. However, instead of candies, players are presented with a cornucopia of amazing produce from carrots to beetroot. The wholesome theme and colourful presentation is a refreshing change from some of the more salacious and intense games currently on the market.

The background for this game is a depiction of a beautiful summer’s day in the British countryside. The wheat is golden, and the sky is blue and beautiful flowers are dotted around the field. The whole scene gives players a yearning to enjoy a cold cider outside a pub with some friends. Even if the cartoon style is a little lazy in parts, the overall effect is quite calming, which is useful in the fast-paced world of online slots.
The playing board here is non-existent. The symbols simply float in borderless formation.

The symbols for this game are split into low-paying, high-paying and special symbols. The low-paying symbols are the red capsicum, the turnip, the carrot and the pumpkin. The pumpkin is the most valuable of these, paying 30x the stake for the top combination. On the other hand, the more valuable symbols are the aubergine, the broccoli, the beetroot, and the corn. The corn is the most valuable, paying out at 200x the stake for the top combination. The specials here comprise the sunflower, the water re-spin symbol and the various fertilizer icons, which help to increase the multiplier value of sunflowers on the board.

Game Play

Harvest Wilds is played on a 7-reel, 7-row cluster pays machine. This means players need to land clusters of five or more matching symbols adjacent to each other, either vertically or horizontally.

The betting range for Harvest Wilds is 20p to £100 per spin. To adjust their bet levels, players can toggle their stake up and down using the tool located at the bottom left-hand side of the screen.
Further information, including a short tutorial and a display of the paytable, can be found via the menu button in the right-hand corner of the screen. The spin and auto spin buttons are located in the centre of the screen.
Volatility for this slot is rated in the very high range. The return to player percentage for Harvest Wilds is 96.35%, which is above average. The biggest payout that players can win on one spin is 10,000x your stake.

Features

The first feature included in this game is the cascade bonus. This bonus is triggered after winning a cluster. All of the winning symbols are then removed from the board and replaced with a new set. This gives players more chances to win from the same spin. This dynamic will continue until no new winners are found.

The next feature is the wild multiplier sunflowers. Whenever a seed lands, it will grow into a sunflower as long as at least one winning cluster is on the grid. Sunflower symbols in this game are wild and come with a starting multiplier of 2x. Between cascades and re-spins, these sunflowers move positions.

The next feature is the re-spin bonus. To trigger this bonus, players have to collect water symbols in the rain meter seen to the right of the board. Filling the meter with five icons triggers the feature, with each raindrop representing a re-spin.
Next is the fertilizer feature. This feature concerns the two types of fertilizer symbol- the regular fertilizer and the epic fertilizer. The regular one increases the multiplier value of one of the sunflowers on the board by 1x. However, the epic fertilizer symbol does this for all sunflowers on the board.

Finally, this game has the feature buy option that ups your stake for increased seeds per round. This option, however, is not available in the UK.

Conclusion

With a fun and easy theme, some exciting features and a great top win, there are plenty of reasons to give this slot a go. However, the volatility is very high, and from playing a couple of games, features are difficult to trigger. This is definitely a high-risk, high reward kind of slot.