Aurora Wilds slot review (Microgaming)

Aurora Wilds is a New Age-themed video slot from Microgaming with re-spins, a Jackpot Wheel and sticky expanding wilds.

The Northern Lights animate this slot, which is somehow a must for these New Age slots.

Microgaming hasn’t produced any own slots for some years: they have outsourced this to several providers. In the case of Aurora Wilds, the game studio Neon Valley Studios has done the work.

Microgaming used to be a leading slots provider, responsible for timeless classics such as Immortal Romance, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2 and Lara Croft: Tombraider.

Now it has become a provider without a clear game plan. The slots it has released lately are a blend of everything and a bit of a mess. The themes and features are all over the place.

It looks like that instead of creating awesome original slots, they have made it their mission to copy other successful formulas seen in the past.

Aurora Wilds is another example of that. It is nothing more and nothing less than an uninspired clone of the successful Starburst slot.

Gameplay and features of the Aurora Wilds slot work?

Anyone who has ever played Starburst (which is about 99% of all online casino players) knows precisely how this slot works. There are:

• 5 reels with 3 rows of symbols
• 10 paylines (win both ways)
• Stacked symbols
• Re-spins with expanding wilds

You can start betting from a minimum of $€0.10 per spin. The maximum bet amounts to $€60 per spin.

The theoretical RTP, variance and maximum prizes of the Aurora Wilds slot

The payout percentage (RTP) is 96.20%, which is fine.

The variance feels low. We see that the top prizes paid out are around 10x to 50x the total bet. The slot celebrates these type of wins like you have just bagged something extraordinary. Like you have just become a multi-millionaire.

Yes, we know that the maximum prize amounts to a whopping 2,000 x the total bet. We get the feeling, though, that chances of winning it are minimal. We hope, someday, we can say we were wrong.

Symbols and payouts

The two only really interesting symbols are the BAR (even that was taken from Starburst!) and the Red Sevens.

If you spin 5 BAR’s you win 25 x the bet. If you get 5 Red Sevens on an active payline, you win 12 x  the total bet.

More interesting are the wilds (Diamonds). The wilds are sticky and expand and provide a free re-spin (the wilds remain during the free spin).

The wilds appear on the middle three reels only. Hope to spin all three wilds and get three re-spins for winning something decent.

Jackpot Wheel Bonus

If you spin three scattered Wheel symbols on reels 2, 3 and 4, you activate the Jackpot Wheel Bonus.

When you spin the Jackpot Wheel, you are guaranteed to win one of the following jackpots:

• Grand Jackpot: 2,000 x the bet
• Major Jackpot: 100 x the bet
• Minor Jackpot: 50 x the bet
• Mini Jackpot: 15 x the bet

Wheel bonuses are used often with online slots and are still very popular. Unfortunately,  this feature lacks some excitement and entertainment.

The beautiful Northern Lights are entertaining to watch but are not sufficient to make this game a real success.

Our verdict on the Aurora Wilds slot

It looks like Microgaming is not up to it anymore.

Aurora Wilds is far from original, exciting or innovative. In all aspects, it isn’t very impressive. We have seen this type of slot too many times.

It doesn’t help that the prizes are pathetic (apart from the Grand Jackpot, which is a miracle if you get it).

2 out of 5 stars.

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