The Wild West Gold Megaways rules show a 96.44% RTP next to a wave icon marked Low. Read those two together and you’d expect a gentle slot. What you get is 6 reels that change height on every spin, up to 117,649 ways, sheriff-star wilds carrying x2, x3 or x5 that multiply each other, and 7 free spins where every wild stays put. Pragmatic Play released it on 30 May 2022 as the Megaways version of Wild West Gold, keeping the saloon town and the multiplier wilds and dropping the fixed paylines.
Each reel lands up to 7 symbols high, and the counter over reel 6 tells you how many ways you’ve got before anything settles. A tall board opens at something like 45,360; a short one drops to a few hundred. Wins run from reel 1 across adjacent reels in any size.
The sheriff’s star lands on reels 2 to 5 only, and every one carries a random x2, x3 or x5. Two stars in the same winning way multiply their values together, so a x5 on reel 2 and a x3 on reel 4 turn one way into 15 times its listed pay.
Three or more canyon-sunset scatters start 7 free spins, and the scatters pay on their own first, from 4x for 3 up to 500x for 6. During the round, every wild keeps its multiplier and its place until the last spin, and a reel holding sticky wilds can’t shrink below the number of wilds on it. Seven spins aren’t many, but the gold star overlay can stretch the round by landing randomly on top of any symbol, and 2 to 6 stars on a single spin add 2 to 6 spins.
Flip the switch under the buy sign, and the stake rises by a quarter, 25x the base unit instead of 20x, $2.50 at the demo stake, with more scatters seeded onto the reels. With the ante on, the buy button greys out. With it off, Buy Free Spins costs 100x, $200 at the demo stake, and the bought spin lands 3 to 6 scatters. That switch is why the rules show a $300.00 maximum bet; the plain-play maximum doesn’t appear anywhere in the demo.
The maximum win cap is set at 5,000x. Hit it mid-round, and the game stops the round there and settles the win, spins or no spins left. Wild West Gold Blazing Bounty came later, and both sit with the other Wild West slots on the site.
The number over reel 6 does more work than the symbols under it. It updates as each reel stops, and it’s the quickest read on whether a spin has a chance. A board at 384 ways has short reels everywhere and few routes for anything to connect. A board at 45,360 has tall reels and plenty.
The rules list the controls. Space or enter fires a spin and stops it early, and keeping space held down runs spin after spin on turbo until you let go. The triple-chevron icon steps the speed up through normal, then quick, then turbo. Plus and minus either side of the spin button nudge the stake and open the bet menu, which has separate bet and coin value fields. Click the credit or bet figure to swap the display from cash to coins and back. Autoplay opens a panel of spin-count buttons with a skip screens option for the free spins intro and end cards, and a second press stops the run.
The bet menu runs from $0.20 up to $300 with the ante bet on. The rules list the theoretical RTP as 96.44%, 96.41% with the ante active and 96.45% for the bought round. Pragmatic also releases this game at 95.35% and 94.32%, a spread of 2.12 points between the top version and the bottom one, and the demo runs the top one.
Six cowboys on one way pay 1x the bet, $2.00 on the rules screen at the demo stake, and every other figure is per way on the same scale. Wilds carry no value of their own; they stand in for everything except the scatter.
| Symbol | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cowboy | 0.5x | 0.6x | 0.75x | 1x |
| Bandit | 0.4x | 0.5x | 0.6x | 0.75x |
| Cowgirl | 0.3x | 0.4x | 0.5x | 0.6x |
| Saloon girl | 0.25x | 0.3x | 0.4x | 0.5x |
| Gold bag | 0.15x | 0.2x | 0.3x | 0.4x |
| Holster | 0.15x | 0.2x | 0.3x | 0.4x |
| A | 0.1x | 0.15x | 0.2x | 0.3x |
| K | 0.1x | 0.15x | 0.2x | 0.3x |
| Q | 0.05x | 0.1x | 0.15x | 0.25x |
| J | 0.05x | 0.1x | 0.15x | 0.25x |
| 10 | 0.05x | 0.1x | 0.15x | 0.25x |
Those are small numbers per way, and the pay comes from stacking ways and multiplying them; a x5 wild sitting in 20 routes pays 20 times over.
The ante switch and the buy sign sit on boards beside reel 1, and both prices track the stake, so the $2.50 ante and the $200 buy at the demo stake become $0.25 and $20 at the $0.20 minimum. The scatter table below is what the round costs you nothing to reach.
| Scatters on screen | Pays | At $2.00 | Free spins |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 4x | $8.00 | 7 |
| 4 | 20x | $40.00 | 7 |
| 5 | 100x | $200.00 | 7 |
| 6 | 500x | $1,000.00 | 7 |
Wild West Gold Megaways puts the original's multiplying sheriff-star wilds on a 6-reel Megaways board with up to 117,649 ways, a 96.44% RTP and a 5,000x cap, then hands you a 7-spin round where every wild sticks. The rules call it Low volatility, and it plays like anything but. It's a slot for players who want the swing.
A x5 sheriff star at the foot of reel 2 with a scatter beside it and a 4x J line running through it on 2 ways is what a paying base spin looks like here, and a lone x3 on reel 5 with nothing to multiply is what most of the others look like. That is the base game in two screens.
A sunset over a clapboard main street, cattle skulls and lanterns on the frame, and a saloon with a hat on the porch rail. On turbo, the ways counter is the only thing you can follow.
So is this the Low volatility slot the icon promises? No. Seven free spins is a short round, the wilds only land on 4 of the 6 reels, and the whole pay model depends on two multiplying stars sitting in the same way at once. When that happens the numbers jump. When it doesn’t, you get a lone x3 with nothing beside it. The game plays High, and this review rates it that way.
The ante switch costs 25% more per spin and shuts the buy button; the buy is the other route, at 100x. Paying $200 to open 7 spins that might hold nothing is a decision the demo lets you make for free, so make it a few times before you form a view.
This is the swingier of the two Wild West Gold games, and Wild West Angel Rodeo gives you the town without the Megaways reels. If 7 spins feels too few to build anything, the original is also available to play on this site.
