Wooden Boy

We all know the story about Pinocchio and his desire to become a real boy someday. We also know about his growing nose whenever he would tell a lie and that part of the story has found phrases about lies worldwide. The designers in RTG decided to make a slot game with this theme and I don’t think I have seen a lot of slots from other software providers with a similar theme.

The game has 20 paylines and 5 reels. The design is quite simple. The slot is situated inside the carpenter’s workshop. The graphic and symbols details are also simple and they look like they are coming from a children’s storybook. At first look the slot doesn’t have a serious feel and I mostly play this game only to have fun.

The wild symbol in the game is Pinocchio and he can come on every reel. Wherever he lands he expands to cover the entire reel. The downside of the game is that he doesn’t offer a multiplier when substituting in a win during base play. Still expanding wilds are great if you get 3-4 of them on the reels. The rest of the symbols have a descent paytable and the highest one awards a win of 1000 x betline for 5 of them on a winning payline.

This game offers a free spins bonus game which is triggered if you get 3, 4 or 5 scattered fairies on the reels. You are awarded 5, 10 or 15 free spins depending on the number of scatters. You have to admit that 5 free spins is really low for a bonus game. The free spins don’t offer a multiplier only the wild symbol has a 3 x multiplier in the bonus game.

Overall I don’t think this is a slot where you can have big wins even in the bonus game. Usually you get small wins and the bonus round awards wins from 20 x bet up to 60 x bet. There are other better slots that you can play from this software provider.

Wooden Boy is one of the earliest games that came out from the stables of Real Time Gaming. Themed on Disney’s wonder boy Pinocchio, Wooden Boy was a source for fun and entertainment during those early days of online gaming. However, time has certainly caught up with Wooden Boy and is hardly ever played anymore nowadays. 1 star down.

The paytable shows some of the lowest win values that I have ever seen from any RTG game. The highest paying symbol, the cuckoo clock, pays only 1000 x line bet, the Fairy Scatter symbol pays 100 x for 5 of them, while the Wooden Boy Expanding Wild doesn’t pay for itself but triples all wins. Wondering how anything big can be won with these very low win values of the symbols! 2 stars down.

3 or more Fairy Scatter symbols trigger 5, 10 or 15 free spins, and this feature game can be retriggered with 3 or more scatter symbols appearing during the free spins. The Wooden Boy Wild symbol appears only on reels 1, 3 and 5, automatically becomes an Expanding Wild on the reels, multiplies all wins 3 x, and can expand on the three reels simultaneously. Nice! The only other feature available in this game is the randomly released jackpot prize, the standard feature of all RTG games. 1 star down.

Playing Wooden Boy is reminiscent of playing slot games a decade ago. A very simple game play, simple graphics, simple background music and sound effects, and of course, simple payouts too! The free spins game comes quite often, are not spaced too far apart like in some games, but are also not so good in terms of payouts. I’ve had 3 consecutive free spins games that paid absolutely nothing, except for the initial pay-off for the triggering 3 Fairy Scatters! I’ve had more than 10 consecutive free spins games that didn’t have any retriggering at all, and I’ve had Expanding Wilds on reels 1, 3 and 5 that paid out absolutely peanuts too! So you can imagine the sort of payouts you can expect from Wooden Boy. I would have expected good returns with 3 reels of Expanded Wilds, but it just doesn’t happen in Wooden Boy. Maybe it’s meant for some other player to win, who knows. 1 star down.