We had our suspicions about Wolf Cub when we first encountered it. It showed off a cutesy theme with a cute wolf cub and a snow filled forest full of animals which wouldn’t go amiss for a Christmas themed slot, but it seems NetEnt decided to tip their hand early and release it in September. And much like many recent games by that same developer, the volatility is low to medium, as it seems titles that could blow you up over 1,000x your wager are getting rarer and rarer these days. But Wolf Cub remarkably surprised us with just how fun it was by combining two simple parts of the slot. The first was the fact Wilds could appear stacked sometimes which could pull together some solid wins, and the blizzard special feature that allows wind to transform certain symbols into others. These two elements in play meant that there was never a dull moment for too long, and thanks the free spins being somewhat common as well, it made Wolf Cub a very fun game to play.
That said, all our criticisms from before do seem to have stuck around. To NetEnt’s credit, Wolf Cub does seem more orientated towards being a slot that has you build up wealth slowly rather than bleeding you slowly for cash. Of course, one has to account for luck, and we admit we had a fair bit of it, but this cutesy game did end up consistently paying out as we played it several times since it came out. The visuals look nice, but also raise somewhat of a curious issue as for who it is aimed towards. The low volatility has us leaning towards a more casual market and it would certainly make sense to adopt an adorable mascot to lure in such people. It ultimately falls down to preference, but when big companies first started doing it, we liked it as a breath of fresh air to overdone, boring themes. Almost makes us wish for yet another Irish or Chinese themed slot!
There are two special features included in the NetEnt release. One of them are free spins, which follows the standard formula of scoring at least three Scatters to activate the bonus. However, how many extra turns you get is dynamic, as it plants moons on all the reels where Scatter was found, and the grand total of all the numbers it displays is how many free spins you win. It’s important to keep in mind that this bonus usually brings in a good haul of cash, but it doesn’t always have to. It mostly depends on the second bonus, which is the Blizzard special feature, and it only occurs during free spins. If a full stack of any symbol appears on the first reel and another of those icons appears anywhere else on the reels, a wind will blow through to connect the two, and transform all symbol in between them into that particular icon as well.
It’s quite simple, but it’s very enjoyable to play. We aren’t going to lie, the visuals may turn off some people, and the low volatility might make it a boring experience for some. But for us, the gameplay which constantly jumped about, with stacked Wilds, free spins and blizzards all over, really made Wolf Cub stand out for us. We personally loved the NetEnt 2017 release and we hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we did if you give it a try.
