Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab Slot Review

Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab - Slot Overview

Gold Coin Studios leans right into the mad scientist trope with Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab, a pacey 5x5 slot set in a minimalist underground lab. Behind the grid you get stone walls, a cluttered workbench and a collection meter with multiplier to the side, while the Doc pulls faces from his corner. Stakes run from 20p up to 10 per spin, so it suits modest and slightly larger budgets.

The game uses an any adjacent pays system, where three to five matching symbols in a horizontal or vertical line pay from any starting spot, then roll away through the Rolling Reels mechanic. With a hit rate of 48.29 percent, default RTP of 96.26 percent and highly volatile maths capped at 25,000x your bet, I found the action comes thick and fast yet still feels dangerous.

Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab Symbols and Paytable

Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab keeps the symbol set tight, with eight regulars and wilds doing the rest of the heavy lifting. On the lower side you get magnets, coloured flasks, a crackling electrical gadget and a ray gun. Land a line of five of any of these across adjacent positions and you are looking at a tidy 1x the stake, which is fine given how often wins connect.

For premiums, Gold Coin Studios wheels out a brain in a vat, a frog headed mouse, a chunky robot and Dr Wildshock himself. Five of a kind with these can pay from 2x up to 15x your bet, so getting the Doc involved feels tasty. On top sit standard yellow wilds and red Exploding Wilds, both able to substitute for any pay symbol and both central to the way the slot pays.

Symbols and Paytable

Symbol	Quantity	Payout
	Wild
	5	x60
	4	x5
	3	x1.5
	Wild
	5	x60
	4	x5
	3	x1.5
	5	x15
	4	x2.5
	3	x1.25
	5	x5
	4	x2
	3	x1
	5	x2.5
	4	x1.5
	3	x0.75
	5	x2
	4	x1
	3	x0.5
	5	x1
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.15
	5	x1
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.15
	5	x1
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.15
	5	x1
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.15

Any Adjacent Pays and Rolling Reels in Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab

I like how Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab breaks from standard paylines with its any adjacent pays approach. Three to five matching symbols just need to touch horizontally or vertically to create a win, from any starting cell on the 5x5 grid. Each win then kicks in Rolling Reels, clearing the winning symbols so new ones fall in, which can chain nicely and give the multiplier room to climb.

Wilds and Multipliers in Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab

In practice the wilds are what make Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab sing. Regular yellow wilds and red Exploding Wilds both stand in for any pay symbol, but Exploding Wilds add two to four extra wilds to the next cascade whenever they form part of a win. Those extra wilds can land on top of existing wilds or Exploding Wilds, stacking multipliers and turning the grid into a real mess, in a good way.

Any wild used in a winning combination also nudges the win multiplier up by one step, which sits beside the reels and applies to the whole Rolling Reels sequence. It resets to x1 when the sequence ends, so the aim is to chain as many cascades as possible off a single spin. When the game is in that sort of mood, I have seen fairly steady base game hits without even needing free spins.

Free Spins and Bonus Buy in Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab

To the left of the screen in Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab sits a box showing how many wilds you need on that spin to enter free spins, anywhere from three to eight winning wilds. Hitting the target drops you into a batch of ten free spins. Oddly, the free spins round plays almost exactly like the base game, which I found both familiar and slightly underwhelming after grinding for the trigger.

While you are in the feature, collecting five or six winning wilds on a single spin adds three extra free spins, and that is about as fancy as it gets. If you do not fancy waiting, there is a bonus buy button that costs 40x your total bet and takes you straight into the round. Given how similar the two modes feel, I tend to save the balance rather than buy in.

Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab Slot Verdict

For me, Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab shows Gold Coin Studios stepping away from the sleepy vibe of some earlier outings and building something far livelier. The high hit rate, any adjacent pays layout, Rolling Reels and wild heavy design give the slot a strong sense of flow, like it has been tuned to keep things moving. In the short term that works well, and I found myself happily spinning along.

Because exploding wilds show up so often, you see added wilds and rising multipliers on a regular basis, which in turn leads to frequent free spin batches. After a while though, the lack of difference between base play and bonus play starts to show. The slot does a few tricks and repeats them, and I caught myself feeling that things were getting a bit one dimensional after longer sessions.

On the upside, there is a hefty 25,000x max win sitting over the whole thing, which is Gold Coin's largest figure so far and fits the highly volatile maths. The downside is that, beyond the lively pace, the game can feel slightly shallow if you stay too long. I treat Dr Wildshock: Mad Loot Lab as a quick hit sort of slot, fun in spells when I fancy cascades and wild chaos rather than long term depth.

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