What do the Red, Blue and Green Wildos each add to the free spins in 3 Wildos?
Each colour switches on its own power-up, and one round can carry two. Red is Upgrade: it adds up to +3 to one or more Multiplier Wilds, and the extra stays for the rest of the round. Blue is Collect: a Collect Wild, guaranteed at least once, takes the values of the winning wilds and adds them up. Green is Extra: a fourth free spin before the round begins. In our 17 natural rounds Red, Blue and Green each came alone four times, Blue with Green four times and Red with Blue once.
Two wild cards on one line, and their numbers multiply
Thunderkick's page calls this the third instalment of the series and sends the bandits to towering pyramids and forgotten ruins. The first chapter, The Wildos, is reviewed on this site. Here the gang plays on five reels of three rows with 9 fixed paylines, paid from the leftmost reel, while the three Wildos wait in bone cages above the grid.
They are also the top symbols. At our €1.00 stake the red-masked bandit with a revolver pays 50.00, 10.00 and 5.00 for five, four and three, and the blue one with a banjo 40.00, 9.00 and 4.00. A green bandit, a gold totem, a feathered headdress, a compass and four bags marked with card suits fill the rest.
The red "$" card is the Multiplier Wild. It stands in for everything except the Scatters, lands only on reels 2, 3 and 4, and shows a value from x1 to x5. One on a winning line multiplies it; two or three multiply each other first. A wild was on screen in 161 of our 750 paid spins, and a line multiplied by x2 or more paid on 25 of them, worth €166.40 of the €193.60 that base-game screens returned.
Spin 171 shows the arithmetic. Two x3 wilds on reels 2 and 3 joined a blue bandit on a three-symbol line, x3 times x3 made x9, and a 4.00 line paid 36x the bet. No base-game line in our log went past x12.
One cake can be enough to open the Bonus Game
The Scatters are cakes in the three Wildo colours, and at most one of each can land on a spin. Each is collected by the Wildo of its colour, a collection the rules call purely cosmetic, with no effect on the odds. The Bonus Game can begin with any combination of colours, and each active colour switches on its Free Spins mode.
No Scatter count appears on the part we captured, and our log shows no fixed one. The Bonus Game arrived 17 times in 750 paid spins, about once in 44. A single cake showed on 10 of those spins, two on 6 and all three on 1, while 253 spins showed cakes and started nothing. Every mode that switched on had its colour on the trigger screen, but not every cake there switched one on.
The round opens with 3 free spins, or 4 when Green is active. In the server's answers every free spin that brought a new wild set the counter back to its starting number, and every wild then stayed put until the end. Our rounds ran from 5 to 11 free spins, 135 in all.
Red adds, Blue gathers, Green adds one more spin
The intro screen names the power-ups before the first spin, and the rules give each a page. The Red Wildo's Upgrade adds up to +3 to one or more wilds, the extra stays for the rest of the round, and at least one upgrade is guaranteed. The Blue Wildo's Collect puts a blue "$" Collect Wild on the reels, at least once, which gathers the values of winning wilds after they are revealed. The Green Wildo's Extra is the fourth free spin.
Upgrades stack. In the Red round from spin 153, one wild took +3, +2 and +3 on three spins in a row, 8 in all, and showed x9 on the way. Collect works across a whole line: on the last free spin of the round from spin 33, winning wilds of x1, x5 and x1 gave the Collect Wild x7, and a line through the x5 and the Collect Wild was multiplied 35 times, our largest. The rules add that with Red and Blue together the collection comes after the upgrade.
Seventeen rounds are too few to rank the modes, and they show it. The free spins of two Blue rounds paid nothing, yet a Blue round also made 55.4x; the best of all, from spin 478, had Blue and Green together and paid 77.2x over 7 free spins. Red and Green never came together in our log, and all three never did.
750 spins at €1.00, ahead of the start five times and behind at the end
Our session staked €750.00 on Thunderkick's demo server and got €683.60 back, 91.1% against a listed 94.20%. A sample this size proves nothing about the long-run figure.
- 750paid spins at €1.00 in the demo
- 91.1%of the stakes paid back
- 77.2xbest round, free spins included
- 17free spins rounds triggered
Hits were scarce: 12.4% of spins paid anything, the median win was 0.5x, and one dry spell lasted 46 spins. The Bonus Game carried the session, with €490.00 of the €683.60 coming from free spins.
The balance went above its start in 5 stretches, 77 spins in all, and peaked at €5,035.90 after spin 33. It last stood above the start on spin 505, touched €4,867.90 on spin 343 and ended at €4,933.60. One oddity: spin 347 paid €76.00 on its own trigger screen, mostly from a line of two blue bandits and two wilds at x8, and its 5 free spins then paid nothing.
We filmed this round in a separate session at the same stake. Seven of its 9 free spins paid, the last four between 3.00 and 7.00 each, for €32.40 in total.
50x to 200x for a Bonus Game, and the series so far
Beside the bet field sits a BUY FEATURE button. The demo server lists three Bonus Game prices, 50x, 80x and 200x the stake, rated at 94.20%, 94.28% and 94.30%. We have no frame of the menu, so the names below are ours, not the game's, and the buy goes unmentioned on Thunderkick's game page.
| Option | Price | At €1.00 | RTP of the buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bonus Game buy 1 | 50x | €50.00 | 94.20% |
| Bonus Game buy 2 | 80x | €80.00 | 94.28% |
| Bonus Game buy 3 | 200x | €200.00 | 94.30% |
Our two control purchases took the cheapest, at €50.00 each. The first came with Blue and Green and ran to 12 free spins for €55.90; the second had Blue alone, 10 spins and €82.20, its Collect Wild showing x9 on the last spin. Two rounds settle nothing about which mode a price buys. The 94.20% on the game page and in the rules is the version the demo runs; a casino may run another, and in some markets the buy is switched off. A BET+ switch, off in all our frames, has one mode on the demo server at 3x the stake.
Against The Wildos, the wilds are the same idea, x1 to x5 cards on reels 2 to 4 that multiply each other. The first game always deals 8 free spins with sticky wilds and adds 3 when a meter under a reel fills; this one starts at 3 or 4, resets with every new wild and hands out the coloured power-ups instead. It lists 15 paylines, 96.15% and 6,250x, where 3 Wildos lists 9 lines, 94.20% and 5,000x.
For whom, then? The base game is quiet, with long dry runs and most of its money from multiplied lines, and the Bonus Game turned up often enough in our log to keep things moving, short as most rounds were. A player who enjoys watching a counter reset and a gang of wilds build up will find plenty to follow; anyone after a higher listed return will find it on other games here, the original among them.
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The Wildos 2 demo review
Pan's Arcadia demo reviewShort questions about cakes, cages and resets
Cakes, cages and the free spin counter raise most of the questions; here is what the rules, the clip and our logs say.
Is 3 Wildos the sequel to The Wildos?
The second sequel. Thunderkick's game page calls it the third instalment in the series, and the studio counts it as its 100th game. The Wildos 2 sits between them and has its own review on this site. The specs differ: 9 lines and a 5,000x cap here, against 15 paylines and 6,250x in the March 2023 original.
Do wilds from the base game stay for the free spins?
Only those on the screen that starts the Bonus Game. In rounds 347, 426, 639 and 681 of our log they were carried in and stuck; any other base-game wild is gone after its spin. Inside the round every wild stays to the end and shows a new value on each winning spin.
Can the free spins run past four?
Yes. The counter starts at 3, or 4 with Green, and in the server's answers it went back to that number every time a new wild landed. Our 17 natural rounds lasted 5 to 11 free spins; the filmed one ran to 9.
Do the cakes collected above the reels bring the bonus closer?
The rules say no: the collection is cosmetic and does not change the odds. In our log the server's count for a Wildo reached three on spins that started nothing, and 10 of our 17 rounds began on a spin with a single cake.