Beastwood: Slot Overview

How many people have been sitting at work and thought, 'I can't take this anymore' and had visions of walking off into the sunset to find their dream job? Probably quite a few, yet career changes aren't always so easy. Well, they are to Mr Beastwood. No, not MrBeast, the YouTuber who gives away money in a variety of amusing ways. Mr Beastwood was a sea bandit who heard there was fame and fortune to be had on dry land hunting monsters. So, like a sort of cross between Geralt of Rivia and Captain Ahab, Mr Beastwood is off to trap beasts for cash with a golden harpoon.

Beastwood is an online slot from Swedish software provider Quickspin that uses a reel-adding mechanic which grows the game grid when winning combinations hit. It's called Endless Reels and if it sounds familiar, just wait until you see it in action. Let's just say, if you've played any Infinity Reels slot like Money Mariachi, Hypernova or Thor, you will have experienced something similar before. The grid starts each spin with 3 reels, holding 4 symbols each, and uses a ways system to create wins. Beastwood has that distinct Quickspin look and feel about it, with cartoon beasts and a dashing lead character in the form of Mr Beastwood. There's a pretty neat cut scene going on, too, as play switches between a base game living room and free spins where Mr Beastwood heads into the forest to do some hunting.

Players don't get golden harpoons, but they do get to pick stakes from a menu offering options starting at 20 p/c and rising as high as $/€100 per spin. Any device can be used to play this highly volatile game (rated 5 out of 5), which generates a default theoretical return value of 96.11%. Of this, 67.18% is allocated to base game payouts; the remaining 28.93% goes to free spins. Keep in mind, Beastwood may be found with lower RTPs which have slightly different stats.

A total of ten normal pay symbols are used in Beastwood – six low-pay 10 to A card ranks, 4 monster medium wins, and one Mr Beastwood high pay. Symbols have base values of 0.15 to 2.5 times the stake, and at least three in view starting from the left are needed to make a winning way. A golden x-looking symbol is wild, which substitutes for all symbols except the bonus. Wilds land on any reel, except the first 3 reels.

Beastwood: Slot Features

Let's cover the Endless Reels mechanic first, which functions as these things normally do. When a winning combination forms on the grid, an extra reel is added to the right side. If the new reel extends an existing win, another reel is added. Reels keep being added like this until a reel appears that does not improve any existing wins. Evaluations are made, and the grid resets to its default size for the next spin.

Symbol Win Multipliers

Calculating payouts is interesting. Each winning combination starts with a Symbol Win Multiplier of x1. When more than one winning symbol of the same type lands on a reel, the number of them multiplies the Symbol Win Multiplier. Also, if more than one wild lands on a reel, the number of wilds on the reel multiplies all Symbol Win Multipliers. At the end of a spin, the payout is determined by multiplying the respective symbol value from the paytable by the Symbol Win Multiplier.

Reel Multiplier

In the base game, an x2 Reel Multiplier appears above reel 5, and on every third reel after that. If a win includes a reel with a Reel Multiplier on it, it multiplies all current Symbol Win Multipliers.

Free Spins

Landing 4 or more scatter symbols in a base game spin awards 10 free spins. Any extra Bonus symbols award +3 free spins each. During free spins, x2 Reel Multipliers appear on reel 4 and on every reel after that. Landing a scatter symbol awards +1 free spin.

Buy Feature

Players may be able to buy free spins from the base game for the cost of 120x the bet. Buying the bonus round has an RTP of 96.38%.

Beastwood: Slot Verdict

At its core, Endless Reels is basically the same system ReelPlay uses in its Infinity Reels slots or the NetEnt family in their InfiniReels games, but with a different name. Remember the dust-up between NetEnt and ReelPlay over who came up with the idea first, who copied who, and so on? It was a real chicken and egg situation, yet it ended amicably enough between the two studios who pretty much gentlemen shook on it and went their separate ways. Will either studio give a hootenanny now that Quickspin has 'borrowed' the same idea? We wait with bated breath for the reaction, if any.

Setting aside any potential ethical issues, Quickspin, it must be said, has done a fine job with its first Endless Reels outing. Whereas ReelPlay's extensive Infinity Reels experience has given them the confidence to craft intricate games like Money Mariachi, Quickspin has kept things simpler for their debut. Not in a way that gets boring any time soon, though. The high graphical standard, animations, and thick fantasy theme are partly to thank for keeping the game interesting. Swift pace and features pick up the rest.

While Mr Beastwood is off tracking beasts, one of the principal tasks is to rack up Winning Symbol Multipliers as high as possible. They can stack surprisingly fast at times, too, when more than one winning symbol is landing on reels, and the reels themselves are contributing Reel Multipliers of their own. In some ways, a similar thing happened with the Doubler symbol found in Quickspin's super hit Cash Truck. Beastwood actually beats Cash Truck in the max win stakes, as the studio recorded a top payout of 29,541.2x the bet during 100 million simulated spins.

There's a bit of 'you say infinite, I say endless' going on in Beastwood, though Quickspin has the self-awareness to label the Endless Reels mechanic 'new-to-us' instead of trying to palm it off as brand new like someone else may have done. Endless Reels might not be new at all, really, but Beastwood is immensely playable anyway. The great look, characters, and features make Beastwood a kind of richly told tale, with gambling in it.