For many slot fans, modern online video slot games provide high quality entertainment meshed with the standard land-based slot machine.
Since the first video slot games appeared in land based and online casinos, they became an instant hit.
Players enjoyed the high quality graphics and added bonus features that the video slots provided.
In today’s modern video slot games, one of the most commonly found bonus features is certainly the wild symbol.
Essentially the role of the wild symbol is to substitute for any of the other standard reel symbols in order to create more winning opportunities. Since its inception, the wild symbol has mutated, sprouting a number of variations on the standard wild. One such variation is shifting wilds.
What are Shifting Wilds?
If you are a fan of online video slot games, you should be familiar with wild symbols and how they function. Online game developers are constantly looking for ways to expand on the bonus features in slot games and make games more enjoyable with bigger and better bonus features.
To this design, many online slot manufactures have introduced shifting wilds into their latest slot games. Shifting wilds are essentially standard wild symbols that appear on reels in a video slot game.
But unlike standard wild symbols, the shifting symbols do not disappear from the reels when the next spin is initiated. Instead the wild symbol mealy shifts positions to the next reel. You’ll find these in most of the best online pokies Australia and other regions currently have on offer.
More Winning Opportunities
The advantage of having shifting bonus symbols in the game means that players get even more chances to create a winning combination on any spin. As with any standard wild symbol, shifting wilds can appear on any of the reels to start off with.
With five reel games, they can appear on reel 1 and shift their way all the way to reel 5 before it shifts off the reels. Alternatively, the wild symbol can appear on reel 3 and shift to reel 5 and then back to reel 1 again.
Once the wild symbol shifts off the reels, it can appear randomly later on in the game on any of the reels and start the shifting process again. Games that feature these shifting bonus symbols are highly sought after as the ability to create bigger winning combinations are increased significantly.
Wild Symbol Variations
Aside from shifting wilds, slot manufactures have introduced a number of novel bonus features where the classic wild symbol plays an even bigger role. Some slot games give the wild symbol more significance by making it a multiplier.
This means that any win the wild symbol helps to create will be doubled or sometimes tripled. Expanding wilds have also become incredibly popular in many slot games. Expanding wilds take advantage of the graphics in video slots where a standard wild symbol will expand to fill the entire reel.
The expanding wild symbol will usually display a high quality animated graphic of the main reel symbol. The expanding wild turns the entire reel wild which means that it creates much more opportunities to chance upon a winning combination. Expanding wilds can be set on specific reels or can appear on any reel during the game.