Patent ID: 8152627

Claim:
A method of facilitating a plurality of rounds of a game, the method comprising: providing a play area comprising a plurality of regions and game elements distributed within the regions, wherein each of the plurality of regions comprises a respective vertically orientated column of game elements spanning between a top and a bottom of the play area; moving a roving wild indicator within the play area to one of the game elements, the roving wild indicator moving between the game elements within the play area during each of the plurality of rounds of the game, the element to which the roving wild indicator moves exhibiting wild functionality for at least a current round of the game; selecting one of the plurality of regions as a wild region, each element within the wild region exhibiting wild functionality for at least the current round of the game; marking a plurality of the game elements, each marking for each element of the plurality selected from a plurality of different marking types; evaluating elements of the play area to identify if the game element to which the roving wild indicator is moved in the current round of the game is within the wild region; evaluating elements of the play area to identify if one or more series of corresponding marked elements were formed, wherein the elements marked with common types of the different marking types correspond to one another and elements exhibiting wild functionality correspond to all game elements; initiating at least one game play function other than wild functionality if the game element to which the roving wild indicator is moved is within the wild region based on the evaluation of the elements; and further comprising providing a plurality of column indicators located outside of the play area, each indicator of the plurality indicating a state of each region of the plurality, wherein selecting one of the plurality of regions as the wild region further comprises randomly selecting one of the column indicators and selecting the wild region based on which one of the plurality of column indicators is randomly selected.