WildPops Slot Review

Played on 5 reels and 3 to 7 rows, you get between 486 and 33,614 ways to win. Released in July 2020, this game is available at online casinos such as Guts, Rizk or Mr Green.

Theme and general information

We already know that Avatar UX is based in Honk Kong and they make Asian slots aimed at the European market. That makes these games slightly more accessible to us than games that are developed by Europeans for the Asian market. Odd as this might be.

With WildPops we don’t get a specific theme as such. The background is completely washed out, though we might be looking at some Asian landscape. On the reels we find somewhat abstract looking card symbols from 9 to A and 7 characters, some of which are animals, others not so much.

The game looks crisp and colourful, though perhaps a little too detailed in the high value symbols, which can be confusing to the eye.

The most valuable of the high pay symbols gives us 5x our stake for 5 on a payline, which is not a lot. There is a super high value symbol as well, though, which pays out 30x our stake for such a win. They only appear from pops, however.

You can play this game from 0.20 to 50.00 per spin.

Expanding reels, multiplier and random wilds

Thanks to PopRocks, we are familiar with the PopWins mechanic. It’s employed here as well. That means for every symbol that disappears as part of a winning combination, two more are put in place, which leads to expanding reels. That doesn’t happen across all reels, mind you. Only the reels from which a winning symbol disappears will be expanded thanks to the PopWins.

As long as consecutive wins keep appearing, chances are that all 5 reels are expanded to the maximum of 7 rows, which then give us 33,614 ways to win. Plus, wins are paid out both ways, from left to right and right to left.

What’s more, we get a multiplier increase on every 7th win. The way to keep track is on the left-hand side, where the multiplier meter sits. Fill it up and at the end a multiplier (beginning at 1x) awaits. It climbs by +1 on every 7th win, but it resets on a loss.

If you manage to expand the full grid of symbols, you get essentially 3 lives, where the reels and the multiplier don’t reset, even if you suffer a loss. If a loss occurs, a life is lost and the whole screen of symbols is exchanged for new opportunities to win.

Finally, there is a Random Wilds feature in the game, whereby 2 wilds are added to the reels every time you win three times in a row. This helps expand a winning streak and getting to increased multipliers.

Verdict: A great-looking game with a thoroughly entertaining gameplay even though not much is new here

The theoretical RTP (Return to Player) of WildPops is 96.3%, which is slightly lower than what we got in PopRocks. The game is also less volatile, however, and wins seem more achievable, especially with the various features in play.

The maximum available win here is 10,941x our stake, which is great, though again, PopRocks had more on offer.

Still, where the other game was very volatile and hard to crack, WildPops seems somewhat more approachable. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, even if the Random Wilds are a nice addition. But we found the game entertaining enough for a little while and that’s all you can sometimes ask for.