Born Wild Slot Review

Born Wild: Slot Overview

As someone who has followed Hacksaw Gaming from the scratch card days, Born Wild felt like a natural next step. The 5x4 grid sits in front of a monochrome patterned backdrop, with neon symbols glowing on 20 fixed lines. It looks quirky yet simple, almost like animal sticker tattoos from an old urban magazine. Under that minimalist skin sits a very high variance jackpot slot dangling an eye-watering fixed €10,000,000 prize.

On paper Born Wild sounds straightforward, but the numbers tell another story. The game can run on a lean 96.2% RTP or a far harsher 93.8% configuration, and both hit like a bucking bronco when the maths turns cold. I treat it as a jackpot shot rather than a grinder, because both the base game and the features can swing from dead spins to outrageous setups in a heartbeat.

Born Wild Symbols and Paytable

Born Wild carries ten pay symbols, five lows and five premiums, plus the all-important wild. The low pays are the animal sounds – Howl, Claw, Hisss, Grrr and Roar – each worth 1x stake for a five of a kind hit. Premiums are the predators: wolf, rhino, gorilla, tiger and cobra, paying roughly 10x to 25x for five. The green wild tops the card, substituting and paying a chunky 250x for a complete line.

Symbols and Paytable

Symbol	Quantity	Payout
	Wild
	5	x250
	5	x25
	4	x10
	3	x2
	5	x15
	4	x5
	3	x1
	5	x15
	4	x5
	3	x1
	5	x10
	4	x3
	3	x0.5
	5	x10
	4	x3
	3	x0.5
	5	x1
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.1
	5	x1
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.1
	5	x1
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.1
	5	x1
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.1
	5	x1
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.1
	Scatter

Born Wild Slot Features

Born Wild keeps the feature set tight with two main bonuses. The first is the free spins round, triggered by landing three bear scatters anywhere on the reels. You start with 10 free games, and every wild that appears turns sticky and stays locked until the round ends. With enough wilds in place the screen can fill with snarling animals, and that is where the paytable starts to show some teeth.

The real focal point though is Lion’s Roar, a hold and respin feature that lights up when three or more lions land. All regular symbols vanish, leaving the triggering lions locked while a single respin plays. New lions also stick and reset the respin life to one. If you somehow manage to cover all 20 positions with lions, the slot drops the fixed €10,000,000 jackpot in one surreal burst.

If you are outside restricted markets you can buy Lion’s Roar straight off for 129x stake. The RTP there hovers around 93.78%, so I treat it as pure gamble mode rather than value play. In testing sessions I have seen feature buys pay a handful of euros back from three-figure entries, then suddenly spike with a strong cluster of lions or a last spin packed with sticky wilds across the grid.

The 200 Spins Born Wild Slot Experience

In my own 200-spin stretch on Born Wild, the mood swings were brutal. Early on I picked up Lion’s Roar after a few small line hits, only to see those lions fizzle out and convert into a screen of wilds that still paid less than the cost of entry. Later runs into the feature were similar: plenty of bonus buys dropping back under ten units, with the odd decent hit spaced far apart.

Born Wild RTP – Be aware of this!

Born Wild is one of those Hacksaw titles running with variable RTP, and that choice has a real impact over time. The generous setting sits at 96.2%, the stingier versions come in around 93.78% or even 93.8%. That sounds marginal, but from the house edge side you are looking at roughly 3.8% versus 6.22%. In relative terms you are giving up a very big slice of long-term value.

Using the same back-of-the-envelope numbers I rely on, a £100 balance spun at £1 per spin could stretch to around 2,632 spins on the good setting, yet only about 1,608 spins on the poor one. That is roughly forty per cent less play. To see which version you are on, open the paytable in real-money mode and hunt for the line stating the theoretical payout percentage for the game and bonus buy.

Born Wild Max Win

On the max win front, Born Wild plays a curious double game. Regular hits through sticky wilds and line wins can reach thousands of times your stake, with some write-ups quoting 5,000x from a full screen of wilds and others listing a technical cap of 10,000x. Sitting above all that is the fixed €10,000,000 lion jackpot, an amount so large I treat it as a daydream rather than a target.

Born Wild: Slot Verdict

For me Born Wild is Hacksaw at their most ruthless. The game looks friendly, with piano notes and bold animals, yet the maths model has no regard for your balance. Lion’s Roar in particular feels like walking a razor’s edge with a single respin life: buy it over and over without a thick bankroll and you will see plenty of features coming back at a tiny fraction of the cost.

I see Born Wild as a slot built for streamers and adrenaline hunters who enjoy severe variance and the lure of a life-changing fixed jackpot. Treated as a high-stakes punt on feral swings, it can deliver wildly entertaining sessions when the grid fills with sticky lions and wilds. Treated as a steady grinder, it will shred cautious players fast, especially on the lower RTP versions that some operators favour.

Screenshots