Wolf Run

The North American frontier has inspired video slot developers to come up with all kinds of themes, focusing on the region’s culture, wildlife and folklore. With Wolf Run, IGT doubles down on the setting, with a game that focuses on the majestic wolf as it prowls the night in search of prey. Throw in stacked wilds, scatter symbols, win multipliers and free spins and you have yourself a fully-fledged video slot.

Now, Wolf Run was released back in 2014, so the visuals have understandably aged since then. You’ll feast your eyes on dense forests, teeming with beautiful totem poles and three wolf symbols, one of which howls dramatically at a full moon. The overall theme still works, even if the game lacks the sophistication found in more recent video slot releases.

But has Wolf Run’s teeth remained as sharp as they were back when the game first hit online casinos? You’ll find all about that and more in my review below.

⚡ RTP	94.98%
🎲 Volatility	Low – Medium
💰 Paylines	40
🔼 Maximum Bet	300
🔻 Minimum Bet	1
⭐ Bonus Features	Scatter Symbols, Wild Symbols, Stacked Wilds, Free Spins, Win Multiplier

Wolf Run Slot Game Free Demo

Even veterans of IGT slots would do well to try out the Wolf Run free demo. This gives you the chance to experience all of the slot’s features and mechanics within a safer space, where none of your funds are on the line. You can see just how stacked wilds can affect your wins and understand the frequency of wins and scatter symbols hitting the reels.

It’s the perfect way to familiarise yourself with the game and decide on an appropriate bet level that can suit your gambling budget.

Pro Tips:

Wolf Run comes with a minimal set of features, as well as a low to medium level of volatility. The aim here is always to get to free spins, where stacked wilds drop more often, allowing you to score even bigger wins.

The bonus rounds shouldn’t take all that long to land and you can extend their duration with even more scatter symbols, allowing you to hit more wins along the way. So, in this case, you can try higher bet levels, as long as they’re still within your gambling budget.

Wolf Run Slot Bonus Features

Running with the wolves can be quite an adventure, and IGT has filled the game up with a variety of classic video slot features. The action is spread across five reels and four rows, and you can have up to 40 active paylines. These can be manually modified, so you can pick the number of paylines you’d like to have on any given round.

Low-paying symbols are displayed as nine-to-ace royal cards, while the more lucrative high-paying symbols depict totem poles and fearsome wolves. You get up to 150x your bet for five-of-a-kind low-paying symbols, and a stunning 400x your stake if you hit five-of-a-kind wolf symbols. You can also place wagers of anywhere between 1 to 300 on every payline.

Hunting with this wild pack can be quite a straightforward affair, and you’re treated to the following special features.

Wilds

Sitting at the very top of the pay table is the wild symbol. This token steps in for missing pay symbols on a potentially winning combination, allowing you to turn near misses into wins and enhance existing prizes.

Wilds are also the highest-paying symbol in the game, giving you wins of up to 1,000x your stake for five of a kind. They generally drop in stacks on the reels, so you get plenty of opportunities to make big wins.

Scatter symbol

Scatter symbols are the only tokens in the game that cannot be replaced by wild symbols. Although they have no payout value, they can unlock the free spins bonus, which can potentially lead you to the game’s biggest wins.

Scatters land on reels two, three and four and if you manage to hit all three in a single round, you’re awarded with five free spins and a 2x win.

Free Spins

Now you might be thinking that five free spins aren’t all that many, and you’d be right. But Wolf Run does allow you to extend your bonus rounds by landing more scatter symbols. You can have up to 255 free spins in one session through retriggers, which is a significant boost.

In terms of gameplay, free spins remain quite similar to the base game spins. The main difference here is that stacked wilds land more often, giving you even more of a chance to score some massive wins.

RTP & Volatility of Wolf Run Slot

IGT clocked Wolf Run’s volatility somewhere between a medium to high setting. The result is a game that hits wins and bonus features quite often, but you don’t necessarily get massive rewards on each new win. That’s paired with a rather low RTP of 94.98%. Had this been a high-volatility game, I’d be up in arms, but given the lower volatility settings, it’s understandable to see RTP being reduced to this figure.

IGT is one of the oldest game providers in the business and has an excellent track record, so you can rest assured that Wolf Run is a safe game to play. Even so, I still suggest playing at a safe online casino to make sure you get the best experience possible.

Wolf Run Slot on Mobile

Despite being an older game, Wolf Run runs excellently on mobile devices. You can simply fire the slot up from your favourite mobile browser on both Android and iOS systems and join the wolves in their moonlit hunt.

The mobile version can be played in both landscape and portrait mode, with no concessions being made to graphics, features or win potential. So, you get an identical experience across all platforms.

Conclusion

Despite its age, I still had a fun time playing through IGT’s Wolf Run. The experience is built for casual players, which is reflected in both the game’s math model, as well as its rather simple set of features.

The stacked wilds turned out to be the biggest source of wins for me, giving me some of the biggest in-game rewards across both the base game and free spins. Speaking of free spins, although the bonus rounds are quite basic (and short unless you manage to land more scatter symbols), they’re still a welcome addition, with increased stacked wilds that helped me push for even higher prizes on the paytable. I was also pleased with the excellent mobile compatibility, which modernised the slot and made it incredibly user-friendly.

That’s not to say that the game doesn’t have its fair share of shortcomings. All of the included features are quite basic and can end up feeling quite tedious when compared to more contemporary releases. Wolf Run is also missing that killer feature that would make it stand out from the rest of the crowd. In the years since it first came out, other games have built on the slot’s core features, and there are better versions out there that overshadow the game’s rather dated mechanics. The visuals have also aged a lot and unless you’re specifically looking for a particular retro look and feel, you might be put off by the overall dated presentation.

I guess at the end of the day there’s lots to appreciate about Wolf Run, but while players who are familiar with the game with enjoy that burst of nostalgia from spinning its wild reels, there isn’t much to offer new players.