Ancient Paws

Ancient Paws: An Archaeologist Dog Digs Up Expanding Wilds

Ancient Paws puts a fedora-wearing, treasure-hunting dog front and centre of an ancient ruins adventure, and Bullshark Games — a studio that's clearly picked up a trick or two from working alongside bigger names in the industry — builds the whole game around a genuinely potent expanding wild mechanic. Set across a 5-reel, 4-row grid lined with carved stone blocks, wins are evaluated over 14 paylines, giving the game a slightly tighter, more traditional structure than the sprawling ways-based grids common elsewhere in this genre.

The core feature is a pair of Expanding Wild symbols. The silver version expands to cover a full column and a half — effectively half a reel — while the golden version expands across an entire reel, covering four positions at once. Both versions carry multipliers, and crucially, they don't just appear in the base game: they roam and stick during the game's dedicated Trail of Treats bonus round, where the expanding-and-multiplying mechanic gets extra room to build into something considerably bigger than a single base-game hit ever could.

Visually, Ancient Paws goes for clean, chunky artwork rather than anything overly gritty — an adorable adventurer-styled dog leading the charge through classic Central and South American-style ruin imagery gives the game a genuinely likeable, approachable feel despite the aggressive math underneath. Ten pay symbols fill out the table, split between 10-through-Ace playing cards and archaeology-themed icons like hats, lamps, compasses and maps, with the wild substituting for any of them to complete a line.

The numbers back up a genuinely rewarding profile: a 96.16% RTP paired with High volatility rated 4 out of 5 by the studio itself, and a confirmed maximum win of 15,000x the stake — one of the stronger ceilings in this batch. The hit frequency sits at 26.35%, meaning roughly one spin in four returns something, a healthier base-game rhythm than volatility alone might suggest, which helps keep sessions from feeling too dry while waiting for the expanding wilds to roam through the Trail of Treats. Betting runs from 0.10 up to 100 per spin.

Between the roaming expanding wilds, a likeable canine lead and a max win that reaches genuinely serious five-figure territory, Ancient Paws stands out as one of the more complete high-volatility adventures in Bullshark Games' catalogue. The free demo at johnessyslots is well worth a run to watch the silver and gold wilds expand and roam before deciding whether to dig for treasure with real stakes.