Wicked Riches is the third slot machines in The Wizard of Oz series, which WMS has created. It’s also the best looking of the three slots, it has multiple progressive jackpots and the features look at least as interesting as the others do. Based on a quick first look, it seems to be a better choice than the other titles in the series, but you will see in the review exactly what it has to offer you.
A game that doesn’t ask the world of you when the bets are made, it has 30 paylines which all become active each round. On them, multiple symbols with special powers (both scatters and wilds) are used, and they can bring you all sorts of bonus features and free spins. You can win a progressive jackpot, or you can get up to $800 cash.
Features of The Wizard of Oz – Wicked Riches
The slot’s features are varied enough, giving you wild symbols, free spins, bonus games and scatters.
The wild symbol does about the same thing as in the other titles of the series. It substitutes for most regular symbols, it offers its own prizes, but it doesn’t influence the Jackpot symbol in any way, not being able to substitute for it even though it doesn’t have a feature attached. It’s unfortunate that you can’t use wilds to assist you with the bigger prizes of the slot, making them even more difficult to obtain.
Tornado Feature
One of the features of the slot is this one, which triggers a Barn selection feature, where you get prizes worth between 1x and 7x the total wager. There is a chance that you will get a progressive jackpot as well in this feature, but if you used the maximum bet then it’s a guarantee.
Winged Monkey Feature
Having the Winged Monkey symbol on the 3rd reel of the slot, no matter in which position it is, will bring you a feature with the same name. A random symbol is selected from the base game, which can’t include the wild, the Jackpot or the Bonus symbols. Any symbol of that type found on the reels turns into a wild, and so does the Winged Monkey icon that triggered the feature.
Free Games Feature
The scatter symbol which has the Wicked Riches Bonus Logo on it will bring you the free spins of the game. Having three to five such symbols, in any scattered position, will bring you 8 free spins, where prizes are multiplied by 2x to 10x, a randomly chosen multiplier. That multiplier doesn’t work with the scatter or jackpot payouts though. Having 3+ scattered Bonus icons again will retrigger the feature.
The same Bonus symbol also pays a cash prize, at 10x the bet for four symbols and at 100x for five.
Betting options and jackpots
The game makes it easy for you to select a bet. You click on one of the five buttons, which have values of $0.30, $0.60, $0.90, $1.20 and $2.40, and which will place line bets of $0.01 to $0.08.
The result, should you get the best payout offered by the game directly, will be a payout of up to $800. An alternative would be one of the four progressive jackpots, which a bonus game can give you. Their names are Emerald City, Haunted Forest, Munchkinland and Kansas, with the first ones having the bigger prizes.
Design and symbols
The design of Wicked Riches appears to be better than the one from the previous two slots that WMS has offered in the Oz series. Once again, pictures with the actors from the 1939 film are part of the action, but they’re different in this case. Dorothy no longer appears in the game, like she did in the other games. The background image shows you a castle at night now.
Symbols: Game Logo (wild, 1,000 coins), Wicked Riches Bonus (100x total bet, scatter), Jackpot Logo (10,000 coins), Wicked Witch (750 coins), Companions (750 coins), Castle (500 coins), Witch Hat (200 coins), Broom (200 coins), Owl (125 coins), Hourglass (125 coins) and Water Pail (100 coins).
Is It Worth Playing?
It’s the best game of the three that have the same Wizard of Oz theme, all from WMS. It has progressive jackpots, it’s very cheap to play, great features, but the fixed prizes are on the low side.
Judy Garland’s 1939 Movie, The Wizard of Oz
Having Judy Garland as the star, The Wizard of Oz is a movie that was released in theaters in 1939, a huge budget production for the time, which failed to capture the interest of the people. It went on to become one of the most watched films of all time eventually, but it took decades until it became a tradition to watch.
You will find The Wizard of Oz – Wicked Riches at any online casino which chooses to use software from WMS, playable either for free or for real money.
