What’s the best mobile slots game of 2017? The votes are in – EGR names Wild Toro Game of the Year.
Last Thursday, the annual EGR Operator Awards ceremony was held at London’s prestigious Grosvenor House. Hundreds of industry leaders gathered to celebrate the year’s best online and mobile gambling operators, affiliates and innovations.
Among the 30+ categories, there’s one that stands out most for players. They’re not interested in affiliate programs, marketing campaigns or the efficacy of in-house operations. Players want to know one thing. What’s the best game of 2017, and where can they play it?
Best Mobile Slots Game of 2017
The coveted EGR Game of the Year Award went to Wild Toro, a uniquely designed digital slot machine with a number of enticing features. The entertainment level is heightened by the chance of unleashing the Toro, which can lead to a max payout of 225,000 coins. At the same time, strategic punters are fascinated by the multitude of built-in betting systems to choose from.
ELK Studios, which opened its first office in Engelbrektsgatn, Sweden in October of 2013, masterminded the development of Wild Toro. ELK is a small studio. Despite its minimal number of employees, they have huge ideas, and work seamlessly to bring them together.
Their efforts have been so impressive that the company actually had two games nominated for the Game of the Year. Poltava, launched in June 2016, did not make the shortlist. Wild Toro, released November 2016, made it all the way to trophy-worthy status.
Without further ado, let’s take a closer look at the game that’s causing such a stir.
Wild Toro Slot by ELK Studios
Wild Toro pits the bull against the matador, and you’ll be cheering for the bull. It’s a 5×4 reel game with 178 ways to win, covering a multitude of (but not all) combinations from left to right. In many aspects, it’s an average slot machine, with wild and free spin features, and an average RTP of 96.4%. But under the hood, there’s a lot more going on.
The game uses a variety of thematic symbols, including the Toro, Matador and Wild Toro logo, plus a rose, ornate fan and orange pierced by a dagger. The lower paying symbols are decorative coins of bronze, silver and gold.
The Wild Toro is the wild symbol, and fulfills the usual role of replacing symbols to make wining combinations. The Matador is a Scatter that only appears on reels 2, 3 and 4.
In standard play, the Matador is a blocker, but when 3+ appear, it initiates the Matador Respin Feature. The reels will respin once for every Matador on the screen, with all Matadors holding in place. Additional Matadors will trigger another respin. The benefit of this is the increased chance of landing a Toro on reel 5.
When the Toro symbol appears (reel 5 only), it triggers the Toro Goes Wild Bonus Game. The bull will charged up/down and/or left/right across the reels to eliminate any Matadors on the screen, one at a time. Every position he passes over will become wild, and will stay wild until the Toro leaves the screen. He also acts as a wild himself. Once he’s done attacking the all Matadors, he will slide left one position on the reels for the following spin, and will continue to do so until he’s gone.
What makes the Toro such an awesome feature, worth up to 225,000 coins, is that he will begin his Matador charge again if another Matador lands on the reels before he slides all the way out to the left. This can reposition him back towards the right side of the screen, causing him to stick around a lot longer.
Betting Systems
Strategic gamblers love to invoke a betting system, and this game can do it for you. ELK defines its ‘Betting Strategies‘ as “a predefined betting pattern which automatically changes the bet level depending on a set of rules”. Optional betting strategies include:
Optimizer: Automatically bets a defined percentage of your credits; resets after win.
Leveller: Raises bet 2 levels after every 5 consecutive losses, capped at 10 levels; resets after win.
Booster: Raise 1 bet level after each loss, capped at 4 levels above original bet; resets after win.
Jumper: Raises 1 bet level after each win, capped at 4 levels above original bet; resets after loss.
IMHO
In my experience, it took more than 50 spins just to see the Toro appear on the reels. I even hit the Matador Respin feature early on, getting a total of 5 respins in all, but was ultimately disappointed to see no Toro appear. Once the Toro finally landed, he stuck around for a long time. He ended up making about half the reels wild, earning me 8200 credits.
This is clearly a high volatility game, and at 100 coins per spin, will cost you minimum $1 to play. If you have the bankroll for it, I recommend giving it a try. Entertainment wise (once the Toro appears), it’s definitely worthy of the title best mobile slots game of 2017. You’ll find it at LeoVegas and other ELK-powered mobile casinos.
