Original Release: Wynn Social, 2018, Android/iOS
True to its name, Wynn’s social casino focuses almost entirely on slots and offers free buffets and deeply discounted hotel rooms (in a roundabout fashion) as its real-world rewards.
Wynn Slots (Android, Wynn Social, 2018)
Where to Buy: Free-to-play download via Android and iOS app stores
How to Emulate: Android Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Along with sister property Encore, the Wynn is one of the Vegas Strip’s more upper-end luxury casino-hotels. In terms of a player’s club it has limited reach beyond that, however, unless you go to Macau or the one random Encore near Boston. But if you have a taste for living it up in style on the Strip, you might want to check out Wynn’s social casino “Wynn Slots” which offers the prospect of up to four steeply discounted nights per month or maybe a free buffet here and there (assuming that ever reopens after the Covid shutdown).
After download, the game dumps you into some random Irish-themed slot immediately which establishes a general pattern of trying to confuse and overwhelm you rather than walking you through the features and game options with a nice introduction (an approach a lot of these online casinos seem to be taking now). Back yourself out by finding the “home” button and you’re in a somewhat poorly laid-out main screen, which is essentially just a long horizontal scroll of available slot titles with not much for sorting options other than “popular.” As of this writing it’s exclusively slots on offer, with one basic and lonely blackjack game in a beta state.
The time to be into Wynn Slots for free rooms was when it first launched in 2018, when it was apparently unbalanced and exploitable. As is inevitable with social casinos, that was not only tightened up but ratcheted quite hard in the other direction. It’s the standard procedure of earning redeemable reward points from your play, here in the form of “gems.” But Wynn Slots differs from the other major social casinos in that what you’re allowed to cash out gems for depends on your current tier level. For extra confusion and challenge, the tier level is NOT tied to your play! Instead, you only earn tier points from specific limited-time gated activities like collecting daily bonuses or participating in special events. Oh and, of course, purchasing play money with your real dollars, which is the only way to advance tiers at anything more than a glacial pace.
So you begin at Tier 0. Tier 1 is earned with relatively little trouble with your stash of free chips, but at this level you are only allowed to redeem gems for two buffets per month (THEORETICAL buffets at this point as they have yet to re-open as of mid-2021). There seem to be no rewards right now at Tier 2, you’ll have to advance all the way to Tier 3 to redeem gems for free stays. The kicker is that tiers are not permanent, they’ll reset 90 days after reaching them unless you hit the earning threshold again! From what I’m seeing, it’s pretty much impossible to earn Tier 3 in 90 days purely from free play unless you devote every waking hour to the game. The most sane way to do it would be to spend about $200 once every three months on chips.
There are a few dozen basic and off-brand slots to choose from right now, none that I recognize from real-money online casinos. They tend to be of the gimmicky variety, for example a cowboy-themed one where you gradually blast off locked tiles that can then be put to use when you hit bonus spins. Most of the games are simple and uninteresting, however. The three-reel slots all look like reskins of each other.
So Wynn Slots might sound like a total waste of time, but it does have some limited utility for the regular Vegas visitor / degenerate. I didn’t get into this enough to do my own in-depth analysis, but I’ve seen it suggested that you’d need to pay $200 every 90 days to maintain tier 3. However, that also buys you enough chips that you could theoretically grind out enough gems for the maximum hotel stays (4) for that period without spending any more real money. So, for the cost of $200 out of pocket plus the time spent spinning the reels (which can be done in the background), you could get four nights at the Wynn quarterly for $200. If you’re a Vegas regular that’s actually not at all a bad deal; one regular weeknight usually goes for about that (pre $45 nightly “resort fee” and tax on everything), a weekend would usually be 2x to 3x as much. From the most recent info I’ve seen online, the resort fee is optional on free Wynn Slots nights; however, if you decline it you won’t get the amenities it supposedly covers (primarily WiFi and gym access, for WiFi they’ll hit you up for $20 per day per device – I can’t seem to find an answer as to whether they have free WiFi on the gaming floor, which at some other properties will follow you back up to your room once you’re logged in).
Videos