Western Belles Pokie
Saddle up for a trip out West, where beautiful cowgirls are waiting to greet you in IGT’s stunning Western Belles pokie. Fantastic graphics are just part of the appeal of this game, as landing the right symbols will launch bonus games, there’s wild substitutions and even an optional Wild Reel feature that sees entire reels helping to complete winning combinations in each spin.
This has to be one of the best-looking pokies around, where everything has been carefully designed to give a 1940’s atmosphere. The girls are (just about) dressed in the sort of gear that Hollywood movies or advertisements of the time would have seen them in, plus other symbols such as lipstick, cowboy hats and boots are all designed to fit in with the overall theme.
It’s very effective, and couple this with some interesting bonus features and we have ourselves a rootin’ tootin’ Poker game that’s now featured across the many online casinos that carry games and software from this popular supplier.
Playing Western Belles
There’s a view of the American desert behind the main part of this game, the title above and control buttons below. These are used to set the amount bet per spin from 0.01 to a maximum of 200.00, but most players will choose to activate all parts of the game and this will mean a stake of at least 0.40. To get the Wild Reels in play will cost a little more, but this should be recouped by the additional winning spins that will result.
All wins pay left to right on adjacent reels and are multiplied by the line bet. Opening up the paytable, which is nicely designed to look like and old book, complete with turning pages, will reveal what the symbol combinations are worth.The 9, 10, J, Q, K and A playing card symbols are written in a suitably Western style and the first 4 of these will all pay 5x, 20x or 100x the line bet when landing on 3, 4 or 5 reels respectively, while the K and A will return 5x, 40x or 125x.
Boots and a cowboy hat are both worth 15x, 60x or 250x the line bet, but it’s the cowgirls who make this game such a visual treat and both the girl in the white shirt and the one who seems to have lost the buttons to her denim top are valued at 25x the line bet when landing on reels 1, 2 and 3, or 100x and 500x if they also land on reels 4 and 5.
Western Belles
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Bonus Features
There’s 50x, 200x or 1000x the line bet to be won when the Western Belles logo symbol stops across an active payline, and this is also the wild, acting as all but the scatter symbol to help complete combinations. Players who have activated all 40 lines can then pay a little more to get 2 more wilds in play. The girl in a short red outfit will appear on a random reel during each spin in the base game and the one falling out of a white suit will be an extra wild that fills 2 reels during the free spins game.
Those free spins are triggered whenever the bonus symbol comes to a rest on reels 2, 3 and 4 at the same time. It’s also worth a win of 2x the total bet which is awarded before the 5 free games commence. A slightly different set of symbols are in use during these spins, where for some reason the cowgirl symbols are facing the other way, but payouts are the same, so if it’s been activated, it’s up to the Wild Reel feature to make this more rewarding than the base game.
The Verdict
Western Belles is one of the better-designed pokies on the market, with great style and a nice theme. It could be argued that it’s a little sexist, as the cowgirls are all wearing revealing outfits, but anyone not put off by this will find themselves playing a game that’s got a distinctive style.
Because they cost a little more, the Wild Reels feature might not actually improve the overall returns, but it’s still nice to see lots of winning lines completed by the randomly applied cowgirls who fill a whole reels at a time. As only 5 free spins are initially awarded, those players who choose not to activate the Wild Reels will have to hope for some quick wins, or to retrigger the bonus round a couple of times if they want a good chance to pick up some wins.