The Hot Cub Club
Can there be anything cuter than sweet little animal cubs playing in the snow? Doubt that! Try to resist TikTok and YouTube videos featuring those cuties. We wouldn't even try: it’s the lost cause. Knowing this, NetEnt has introduced the new video slot full of puppies. What do you think, will it be more popular than the YouTube pet and cub extravaganza? Let’s try to figure it out.
Wolf Cub is a standard slot with five reels and three lines. It has 20 fixed paylines. The slot is filled with tiny little wolves and other cubs of all sorts. So it’s pretty much cuteness overload, which we don’t mind at all by the way. The background of the slot is a forest covered with snow. There is a little wolf that looks like a husky puppy sitting under the tree.
It supports you along the way, cheering each win with a friendly ‘woof.’ The backdrop’s animation is perfect. It’s so sleek and is made so skillfully; you don’t pay any attention to it while playing. Don’t know about you, but we give this level of expertise our thumbs up. It’s so annoying when the design begins to interfere with the gameplay.
The regular mode of the game is rather simple. You hit combinations of tiles on the lines and get paid for those. The winning rules are standard: all the combos have to comprise at least three tiles and any combo has to start on the leftmost reel. The low-hand tiles are standard card suits symbols.
They are designed to fit the theme of the slot: they look as if they were made of wood and painted over. The 3D tiles look very authentic. The payments for all the suits are the same. The combination of 3 tiles is paid 5 times the bet. For the four of a kind, you will be paid 20x the bet. And the maximum combo of 5 tiles is worth 80x.
Apart from those four, there are five more authentic tiles. They all feature the cubs of different animals. On each tile you can see the headshot of the animal along with the footprint of its paw. Five Owl tiles are paid 150x. The combination of five Leopards is worth 200x the bet. The Moose tile is paid 250x the bet for five. Five Bears are worth 300x. The tile with a little Wolf is paid 600x for the five of one kind combo.
The regular game mode with its tiles is quite standard. But apart from it, there are some bonus features that make this slot irresistible. First, there is the Wild tile. It features a wolf’s paw print and is signed ‘Wild.’ It may hit any reel during the regular game mode or the bonus mode. As usual, the tile substitutes for all the tiles except for the Scatters so the winning combinations could be formed.
Another tile full of perks and possibilities is the Scatter. It’s a tile with the full moon on it, and there is a sign across the icon saying ‘Scatter.’ It’s pretty hard to miss. When a combination of three Scatter tiles is hit, the Free Spin mode is activated. To find out the number of free games, all the reels with Scatters on them change their regular stops to the tiles with numbers on them.
Then they start to spin. After they stop, you will know the number of your free games. It will be equal to the sum of all the numbers visible on the reels. The tops here are 115 spins. All the Free Spins are played at the triggering coin value and betting level.
The Free Spin mode comes with one extra perk: the Blizzard Feature. When you hit the Blizzard Feature, the tile on the first reel becomes stalked. And all the tiles on the reels that match the stalked tile would reach towards the first reel. They will replace all the tiles along the way with their clones. Say you hit the stalked Moose on the 1st reel, and two more Moose tiles: on the 4th stop of the 1st row and on the 3rd stop of the 3rd row.
Thus, the first row will have a four-tile Moose combo, as the spaces between the first and the fourth stops will get filled with Moose tiles automatically. The same would happen to the third row. Only here the combo will be smaller: 3 tiles only. The Wild tile may also participate in this feature, but only if it appears as a stalked tile on the first reel. Just like the rest of the crowd.
As for the betting, it is just like any other NetEnt slot’s betting. To make a bet you don't need to choose the paylines, just choose the coin’s value and the betting level. The coins are worth from 0.01 to 1.00 credits each, and there are 10 levels for betting. The minimal spin bet is 0.20 credits, and the maximum is 200.00 credits. As for the betting range, it will make everybody happy.
Highrollers would love the solid 200 credits and the owners of more moderate bankrolls will be happy with low starting points for the wagers. But both types of players will be thrilled with the slots RTP worth 96-97%.
You know what? Our favorite animal is the wolf, no doubt about that. It’s cute, it’s furry, and it comes with some awesome payouts. No other animal can compare. Except maybe the kittens. Those are cute, even without any winnings attached. Damn you, YouTube!