Wild Toro Slot Machine

Bullfighting may not be considered animal friendly (especially not for the bull), but here the bull is in charge. Have Elk Studios been able to seize the possibilities and grab the bull by the horns or is unBULLievablly disappointing?

A Site for More than Spanish Eyes

It begins with the name which soon disappears and the background image that will be in the game is shown in greater detail. As bullfighting is mainly associated with Spain, it’s no surprise that it has the setting of a small-town pueblo. 

Through a bird’s eye view, we see little houses with pink walls and paper decorations by the windows, old-school lanterns and bunting. Clouds move, smoke comes out of the chimneys and little flags move with the wind. The music is a gentle flamenco sound with sound effects of crowd voices in the distance.

The 5 big reels have a darkened shade, and completely take over the screen. In particular, the flower, matador and ornate fan icons stand out, as they actually come out of their reels. It’s all too imposing and distracting. As this game isn’t your conventional playing, there aren’t your reels on the side or you credit buttons. The button for playing is large enough to see and very inviting.

Wild about the Gameplay Options

At the bottom left there are two piles of coins which is where you can change the amount you play for. It’s originally for 0.20, but you can click on one of the other 8 boxes of higher value. Going down over 3 columns, you can also choose 0.40, 0.60, 1.00, 2.00, 4.00, 6.00, 10.00, 20.00, 40.00, 60.00 and 100. It’s clearly indicated the coins are euros.

There are other settings. By pressing down the spin button you get to play automatically for 10, 25, 50 or 100 spins. The game goes very quickly but if you want to play at an even faster pace, you can. So many games have limited options. This isn’t a problem here. You can switch off the music, game sound effects and even remove the coins on screen if you find them annoying. You also have the chance of a ‘Reality Check Interval’ of 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 1 or 2 hours.

Roses are most certainly sweet here. They are the most valuable regular symbol with a maximum value of 1,000 credits, more than double the knifed orange which is second. The 4 other regular symbols are made up of a large ornate fan and then gold, silver and bronze coins. Two of a kind is not worth anything.

There are 178 ways to win. That’s certainly too many to show in form, so you get a basic diagram of an example that wins, and one that wouldn’t.

Little to Rule out

The rules are clearly explained within 23 numbered points, all neatly spaced out over several pages in the Paytable (trophy symbol). The Wildcard is labelled Wild Toro in big yellow letters, and replaces everything except for Toro and Matador. If you get a winning line purely out of Wildcards, then you get the equivalent of the highest value symbol.

More excitingly, is the Toro symbol which you can only get on the fifth reel. The rather snazzy looking bull counts as a Walking Wild and moves from left to right one respin at a time. It moves (or should that be charges?) to the left-hand side changing any Matadors to Wildcards and then stays as a Wildcard for the first reel. You won’t have seen anything like it!

If you get 3 Matadors on the reels of 2, 3 and 4, these become Respin Triggers which hold the Matadors in place and give extra spins if another Matador comes up.

Better explained are the 4 different options for play. And they are innovative! The Optimiser (blue) changes the bet level automatically, adapting to the select percentage of your balance (1%, 2%, 5% or 10%). Leveller (green) raises 2 levels after 5 consecutive losses, with a repetition increasing 2 more levels.

A Booster (red) raises the bet one more level after a loss, until reaching 4 more levels above base bet. The Jumper (yellow) raises a level after every winning round, until reaching 4 levels above the bass bet. The latter 3 all reset after a loss.

Toro’s Terrific

Though visually it isn’t the most striking of games, is full of pleasant surprises and very dynamic, original gameplay. So much thought has gone into making this game adaptable to your own style. Like Toro, it rewards an aggressive play.