Today’s online slots are more powerful than those of old for several reasons. One of the main ones is the addition of wild symbols, which provide more opportunities to land a winning spin. In this guide, we’ll tell you all about wild symbols and why they live up to their name.

What Are Wild Slot Symbols?

Wilds are symbols that help you make winning combinations. There are multiple ways to unlock prizes when playing online slots. Identical symbols lining up, bonus features triggering or a random jackpot dropping can all result in a payout. However, wilds are unique because they can turn nothing into something.

Think of a wild as a joker in a pack of playing cards. A wild symbol can substitute for any other symbol on the reels (except for scatter/bonus symbols). For example, if you rolled in two cherries and a wild, the wild could act as a third cherry to create a winning payline.

Wilds can also trigger payouts in their own right, matching a number of them on an active payline. Usually you need three or more symbols on a payline to trigger a win.

A Brief History of Wild Symbols

Slot machines haven’t always featured wilds. When Charles Fey invented the Liberty Bell slot in 1894, it featured horseshoes, spades, diamonds, hearts and Liberty Bells. As these new games gained popularity, more features were added to the mix. Extra symbols were introduced, as were cash prizes.

By 1976, Fortune Coin Co. developed the first video slot machine. This game introduced cheat-proof digital technology and opened the door to the next generation of slots, as well as providing the freedom to experiment with new ideas. .

Types of Wild Symbols in Today’s Online Slots

Wild symbols have evolved in line with the latest trends in online slots gaming. To match the complexity of today’s top spinners, wilds now line up in a variety of ways. When you play slots online at LiveRoulette, you’ll find the following types of wild:

Standard Wild Symbols: These wilds typically appear as single symbols on any reel and substitute for all other symbols except the scatter.

Stacked Wild Symbols: As the name suggests, stacked wilds can pile up on top of each other. Stacked wilds can cover an entire reel at once.

Sticky Wild Symbols: These wilds will stick in place, often during a bonus round. Once they roll into view, they’ll hold their position for a set number of spins.

Expanding Wilds: An expanding wild has the power to grow and spread out across multiple positions on the reels. The larger the wild becomes, the more potential to create winning combinations.

Rushing or Walking Wild Symbols: Where present, these often appear during a free spins round. They move from one position to another as the round progresses, allowing you to potentially collect multiple wins as you go.

The Best Slots Online with Wild Symbols

There are hundreds of top titles to choose from. Most slots feature wilds of some type or another. In the list below, we’ve picked out some of our top picks available on our Canadian online casino.

Money Train Slot

Five reels, 40 paylines and payouts topping 20,000x your stake. It’s easy to see why Money Train by Relax Gaming  has become one of the most popular online slots at LiveRoulette. The bonus round features seven wild modifiers, each of which can increase the size of your prize.

For example, the “widener” will reveal a mystery prize and add another reel to the mix. The “payer” reveals a prize and adds it to all other visible symbols of the same type. In tandem with these features, the Money Train slot contains wilds in the form of shotguns. These symbols substitute for all others except the scatter.

Starburst Slot

This is a great online slot for those who want double value on wilds. Starburst wilds appear on the central three reels, expand and stick in place during a re-spin. NetEnt’s Starburst is a great slot for beginners, and a good introduction into the world of wilds, too.

The Invisible Man Slot

There’s nothing obscure or hidden about the wild symbols in this online slot. Wilds are available during normal gameplay. However, when you trigger the free spins bonus, Police Wilds have the power to walk across the reels from left to right from reel 1. Additionally, you can roll in Griffin Wilds that move in the opposite direction to police officers, starting on reel 5.

Jurassic Park Slot

The developers at Microgaming wanted to create a fitting tribute to the mighty dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, so they did it with stacked wilds. When you spin this game’s five reels and 243 paylines, stacked wilds (Jurassic Park logos) can pile up on a single reel. Wilds also play a part in the bonus round. By activating the free spins round, you’ll have the opportunity to roll in wilds that split, multiply and make entire reels wild.

To play these online slots and more, log in to LiveRoulette.com today.

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November 27, 2023

Charles August Fey was the American pioneer who is widely accredited with having invented the world’s first slot machine, all the way back in 1894. However, it was not until he built his Liberty Bell machine in 1899 that the slots craze really took off, first in the US and then around the world.

Fey’s earliest machines featured symbols that were largely inspired by playing cards, but the very first reel symbol that modern slots players would recognise was the bell itself, which gave the Liberty Bell machine its name. If three golden bells all lined up, then the player would receive the jackpot. Slots symbols have not looked back since, with those very first jackpot triggering bells igniting a casino game revolution. The bells themselves are still being used in online slots today.

Early Symbol Variations

Soon after the Liberty Bell started making waves on the San Francisco gaming scene, slot machine had to start diversifying their product ranges. Part of this was due to new legislation that limited the use of slot machines.

Developers of the time repurposed their machines as candy dispensers, with a jackpot more likely to land a player a lolly pop or a stick of candy rather than coins. This had a profound effect on the symbols that appeared on slot reels, as playing cards and other symbols of the same ilk were replaced by cartoon style images of fruits. Many of these still endure to this day, such as red cherries, watermelon slices, and peaches.

Another item that these slot derivatives of the early 1900s liked to reward their players with were packets of chewing gum. These were usually released when bar symbols lined up on the reels, bars that were intended to resemble stacked packs of chewing gum. Such symbols have also stood the test of time, with plenty of modern slot games featuring various bar symbols on their reels.

Since the turn of the digital revolution, games designers have been free to create huge amounts of new symbols

Slots Go Digital and Symbols Go Wild

The next big turning point for slot machines was the 1970s and the introduction of video slots in casino resorts in places like Las Vegas. While they did not immediately capture the imagination of players, they did bring about the possibility of digitally designed and enhanced reel symbols.

This led to symbols being able to flicker and move while on the reel, as well as being rendered in 3D and in whacky or changeable colours.

More Features Means More Symbols

As well as making both offline and online slots more visually appealing, the other gaming sea change that digitisation brought about was the ability to create new bonus features as well as linking games across online platforms via networked jackpot pools.

With these enhancements to the gaming experience came the need for new symbols such as those that depict Wilds, Scatters and Multipliers.

Themed Games Need Personalised Symbols

Another phenomenon that now exists in casinos of all varieties is the themed slot, with everything from famous rock bands to TV shows lending their brand to a slot provider. This means that many slot symbols are now unique to a particular game where reel symbols depict the faces of band members or recognisable elements from a gameshow.