There are no wolves in sheep’s clothing here - but if full moons and howling are your thing, there’s plenty of choice and a great selection of games. For example, there’s a beautiful graphic of two wolves in GameArt’s Wolf Quest and another lovely one of a wolf in silhouette, howling at the moon - that’s the wild and it substitutes for everything except the scatter. But that’s just the beginning. Because if you win the wolves get animated - there’s a scary moment when they’re in profile and their eye looks right into yours. Then they put their heads back and howl. You’ve also got campfires, an eagle and an owl, so of course we’re in the American West. Get three of the wolf’s paw print scatters and you trigger the bonus feature. However, they’ve got competition from Microgaming for the best wolf soundtrack and graphics - White Fang has a proper wolf howl on it. This is a beautifully realised slot, with an animated wolf against a snowy backdrop. It starts with mysterious music, and then the pace gradually picks up. It’s a 50-payline slot and three wolf paw prints in the snow trigger the bonus round. However, if Silver Fang appears as the scatter symbol, the bonus is boosted. Wolf Moon from Amatic has a striking symbol of a wolf’s head looking straight at you, but apart from that the graphics are a lot more basic. However, you can customise the gameplay on this one while you go off in search of the grey and white wolves. Get those wolves to appear in a pack on the reels, and good things start happening - so move in to make a killing! Click here to read more.
If You Like Your Wolves Cuddly and Funny....
Let’s see what another big player, NetEnt, does with the wolf idea. Well, Wolf Hub is at the opposite extreme from Wolf Quest. If you like your wolves cute, cuddly and grinning, this is the slot for you. We’ve got a white Arctic fox that could easily be mistaken for a moggie. Three scatters trigger a bonus free spins round and that give you the possibility of the Blizzard feature with symbols stacking to boost your winnings. Plenty of snow and reindeer as well as wolves and a very happy-looking bear. Maybe he just ate a reindeer.
Of course, some wolves only work part-time. The rest of the time they’re ordinary teenage geeks. The thing is to spot the ones that are going to turn wolfy when the full moon comes out. Hard to do, but MicroGaming has been following a teen wolf round town while the moon is full, and boy, is he in party mode. We’ve got girls, we’ve got a sports car and then we have naughty claws - scratchers rather than scatters. Groovy music, multipliers, rolling reels, stacked wilds and lots of other great gameplay make for unscary fun.
Great Production Values in Werewolf Wild
A much more convincing werewolf turns up in Aristocrat’s Werewolf Wild. We’re in Victorian London, the moon is full, and there are hansom cabs, gas lamps flickering and a street fair in the background that gets suddenly drowned out by the howl - and it really is a howl - of the werewolf. Every time lightning strikes one of the characters, they become a werewolf. Worse than that, they then start panting. Quite worrying. Also rewarding, though, because five werewolves give you a 1,000 win. The werewolf is the wild of course. With loads of animation and high on atmosphere and entertainment, this is a slot with top-of-the-range production values.
Wolf Run by IGT has a howling wolf wild and a paw print scatter - three of these will start the bonus. It’s a fairly traditional slot which has its origins in a physical slot game and doesn’t make the same use of animation and other features as some of the newer slots from IGT do.
The howling wolf gets wild and sticky in Ainsworth’s Winning Wolf. It’s a 50-payline, five-reel slot teeming with North American wildlife - deer, owl, buffalo and squirrel. But it’s the eagle that gets you the really big paylines. Spot five of them roosting on one line and you’ve got a 1,000 bonus coming your way. The mountain is the scatter, and if you get five anywhere on the reels, 100 times your wager is headed your way.
Progressive Jackpot If You Can Outrun the Wolf
Get the wolves howling big time by chasing down a progressive jackpot with Wolf Gold. Pragmatic Play has added some intriguing features, including a bonus that could get you unlimited spins for free while the bonus is running. With stallions, cougars and eagles, this slot is teeming with wildlife, but the big one is the buffalo, landing you the largest multipliers. The wild is the desert fox, and what you need to watch for is the full moon. Six moons start the respin feature. The regular symbols are replaced by moons and these have coin values. If the respins produce another moon, it joins the others. If you manage to get the 15 reel positions full of moons, the Mega Jackpot is yours.
Are you ready for a wolf to jump out of the screen straight at you and then race across the reels? It’s all in Golden Wolves from Konami, which has some great effects. There are 30 fixed paylines, and that golden wolf could give you 10,000 if you wager the maximum. Or for something completely different, try Rabcat’s Wolves Tale.
There is a great set of wolf slots, as we’ve seen - but if you have your own indoor wolf, you’d better turn the sound down or Rover may start howling back.