So here's another one to put into the 'relatively small top prize but really weird volatility profile' camp, it's WIXX by NLC. They tag it as Medium Volatility but the way it meets RTP, and its volatility profile, is really weird.
The max pay on this game is 2796x stake, as per the stat sheet in the affiliate pack.
I've put many tens of thousands of spins through Wixx this week on the NLC affiliate site, I was WFH so had one of my spare PCs just churning through this for eight or more hours every day on autoplay.
I have played Wixx a reasonable amount for real in the past, but it was only after doing all those spins that I realised there is basically only one way to win on this game, and if you don't get the specific 'super feature' trigger, you will never win.
Results will vary depending on how long it takes to get the trigger, but I've seen my balance go down by as much as 1700x before getting it, I cannot stress this enough, if you don't get the trigger, your balance will only go one in direction, relentlessly down. (I'm not saying the game doesn't have other wins in it, of course it does, but for a big hit, this is the only show in town.)
Normal features are triggered by getting four of the same coloured gem on each of the reels, the colours are blue, red and yellow. When this happens you go off into a single super respin with enhanced reels (each colour of gem has its own modifier for the super respin), but the max possible pays on each of these is kind of capped by the fact you only have one modifier in play.
The way to get the juicy pays is to get TWO of the same gems on each of the reels, specifically the red and yellow gems, because then you get a respin with both of their modifiers in effect, the yellow gems confer a 5x multiplier, and the red gems act as wilds, this means you can get full screens of gems that pay wild and 5x - you can wait a
LONG time for this trigger to happen. (Theoretically just the yellow gems could hit the same full 5x screens on the respin, but you'd need godlike luck for that to happen (I didn't see it once), I reckon you need the wilds in there too.)
So basically, this is the trigger, this is a still from a video on my old channel, as this was a real money hit I had playing at Skol. You can see the red and yellows on 1-2-4, the diamond on 3 is a wild and substitutes for both gems.
This is how it landed on the respin, it's not perfect, as you can see I have two yellows and a blue on reel 2 which pay less than the reds, if that had been three reds on reel 2, it would have been the top pay on game, as it was however, it represented a (still very good!) 1291x stake.
My point here is that this is the only show in town when it comes to winning on this game, certainly in terms of hitting a big win, and it's the only way to get out of the hole once you're maybe 200x or more down.
If you didn't know this trigger was in there and hadn't seen it, you might genuinely conclude the game was essentially impossible to win on and would never meet RTP. It's a really weird way to balance a game, time and time again during my test sessions, it was only this specific trigger that could pull a balance back once it'd gone south. if you don't get this, you're going to lose, and potentially quite heavily. Obviously if you get it relatively early on in a session (as I did at Skol), you can bag yourself a solid win.
I'm entirely content that the game makes RTP, but if you decide to have a dabble yourself, don't be deceived by the stated medium volatility and relatively low top prize of under 3000x, if you don't get that super trigger, this game will take you to pieces.
