Calaveras Explosivas

Calaveras Explosivas Overview

Calaveras Explosivas from Habenero, or "Exploding Skulls", describes this slot game perfectly. In this game, it is your job to match large sets of same-coloured skulls together in a cluster pay dynamic. Much like a Mexican-themed Candy Crush, players will become engrossed in the satisfying way these brightly coloured icons appear and are destroyed when landed in identical sets. If this delightful playing dynamic was not enough to rope players in, there is also a very entertaining Mariachi soundtrack and a few valuable bonus features to activate.

Although the bonus content here is a little unconventional, it is still beneficial in scoring bigger payouts. The first feature you will encounter is the wild bonus. This symbol can form wins by substituting in for regular icons in multiple combinations at once. The next feature is the cascade feature, triggered every time that you create a win, casting the winning symbols off the reels to be replaced by new ones. Consecutive cascades also build an attached multiplier. All features will be explained in more detail later on in the review.

Theme and Symbols

The theme for this slot is the traditional Mexican holiday of the day of the dead or Dia de Los Muertos. The festival is an event that takes place every year on November the 1st and 2nd. The festival honours the dead with lively celebrations that combine a cultural mix of Aztec rituals and Spanish Catholicism. The festival is reflected in this game in the many masks that you see across the reels, which are worn by the festival's attendants to show respect for their relatives that have passed on and the various decorations players will be able to see in the background.

Speaking of the background, this slot has depicted a lively and colourful Mexican town that has been lit up and decorated in the most vibrant collection of colours in celebration of the festival. Each house in the street has its lights on and is covered in flags and painted a bright colour. The background image is set at night when the colours and lights show up that much brighter in the dark streets. The architecture is very traditional and suggests the town is a little more rural with a church and village square being located in the centre.

The board is pretty much non-existent; instead, the skull icons just fall slightly haphazardly onto a roof in a kind of Tetris style mechanic.

The symbols for this slot number seven in total and are split into high-value, low-value and special icons. The red skull is the lowest value symbol on the board, paying 13.33x the stake for the top combination. This symbol is then followed in terms of value by the yellow, purple and green skulls, which payout in the range of 333.3x the stake to 1,000x the stake. However, the blue skull is the most valuable, paying out at an amazing 3,333.3x the stake for the top combination. Finally, the specials are the white skull, which represents the scatter symbol, and the golden skull, which represents the wild. The scatter has its own value of up to 1,000x the stake when landed in combinations.

Game Play

Calaveras Explosivas is played on a cluster pays mechanic board, meaning that you score wins by landing the same-coloured symbols together in clusters. The maximum symbol cluster that you can create is 20.
The betting range for Calaveras Explosivas is 15p to as much as £3,000 per spin. To change your betting level per spin, use the bet adjuster tool located at the bottom of the playing window.

Further information regarding the slot, including a display of the paytable, can be accessed by clicking on the settings menu. The spin button is located to the bottom right of the reels. You can set up auto spins in the game's menu.
The provider has not disclosed the volatility of Calaveras Explosivas. The return to player percentage for Calaveras Explosivas is 96.7%, which is over average. The biggest payout that players can win on one spin is 500,000x their stake.

Features

The first bonus feature included in this game is the wild bonus. The golden skull substitutes for all other regular symbols to help score more wins. However, unlike regular wild bonuses, this wild will form part of multiple cluster wins if it can, meaning that more successes and more cascades can result thanks to the influence of the wild.

The cascade feature is the other main bonus here and is one that is common in cluster pay slots. It is triggered every time that a winning combination is made. When this happens, the winning symbols are blasted off the reels and immediately replaced by a new set from above. Up to 30 symbols can be replaced in this way. The cascades will continue until no new winners are formed from a new cascade.

These cascades also come with an increasing multiplier modifier, which grows with every consecutive cascade that falls. The 8th avalanche that falls, for example, will reward you with a multiplier of 128x your stake. Any special badge symbols that fall in winning combinations also increase the multiplier by 1x.
There are no free spins or jackpot amounts available for this game, however, with a top payout of 500,000x their stake, players shouldn't need one.

Conclusion

Fun, bright and musical, this slot is a little ray of sunshine with some tidy graphics and an exciting couple of features. From a statistical point of view, Calaveras Explosivas also looks good, with a robust RTP and a top payout that makes your eyes water. Big bets also give high rollers plenty of flexibility with their stake to go for those elevated prizes.