Diablo Reels

Theme and Design

Diablo Reels is a beautifully designed slot played out on 2 sets of 3 reels and 3 rows each. The game is a mix of styles. The reels and paytable are most definitely classic slot with fruits, bars and lucky 7s, whilst the backdrop and the theme are Mexican Day of the Dead invoked with painted skulls, potion bottles, cigars and roses. It’s a splendid looking game, showcasing ELK’s creative skills and backed up with a Mexican-band soundtrack.

RTP and Variance

Diablo Reels has an RTP of 96.3% which is good value and higher than many other ELK Studio games, some of which come in at just 94% RTP.

The variance is in the mid to high range (scored 8/10 by ELK themselves on the game data sheet available via their website). So you should expect the win distribution to be quite uneven, with bigger wins weighted towards the bonus rounds.

ELK also publish a win rate of 18.1% for this game which means on average less than 1 in 5 spins will produce a winning combination. That is quite low too – most slots come in somewhere between 20% and 30%.

Maximum Win

The top payout is just 2,500x which is very low for a game of this kind. You can find much better potential returns in slots like Avalon Gold (25,000x) or Zulu Gold (10,000x).

Symbols and Paytable

Diablo Reels plays out on two reel sets. Each one is 3x3 with 5 paylines on it. The base game plays out on the lower reel set but the top one comes to life during re-spins and free spins features.

The top reel set ONLY has premium symbols on it, giving you the chance to score bigger wins.

Wins are scored by landing identical symbols from left to right across the reels, so just 3 are required to trigger a payout. There are EIGHT pay symbols in the paytable - Chilies and Limes (a nod to Mexico) then the classic fruity symbols – bars, 7s, bells, horseshoes and the top paying diamonds. Values range from 0.5x for 3 chillies up to 50x for 3 diamonds.

Look out for the Wild too that substitutes in for all other symbols AND pays out 50x when 3 appear on a line. These symbols will also stack and nudge – more on that in a minute.

Finally, the scatter skulls are critical because they trigger the free spins round, during which both sets of reels become active.

Features and Gameplay

Despite its retro look, Diablo Reels has a few new tricks up its sleeve in the form of modified wilds and free spins with extra paylines. They work as follows.

Nudging Wilds With Re-Spins and 5x Multipliers

Look out for Wilds with an arrow on them. When they land they trigger re-spins, nudging up with each one until they leave the reel they are on.

If your Nudging Wild appears on the top reel set it will have a multiplier of 2x or 5x to be applied to any win it is part of. And if more than one wild is involved in a win and both have multipliers then the multipliers are added together before being applied to a win.

Stacked Wilds and Re-spins

When Wilds appear fully stacked on a reel, another re-spin feature is triggered, where BOTH reel sets are in play, and BOTH have a wild stack on them. Remember, with BOTH sets of reels going, you have 10 paylines to win on.

If you land Nudging Wilds and Stacked Wilds on the reels at the same time, the Wilds become sticky, which boosts your chances of hitting a wild win.

Free Spins and Bonus Reels

Finally, if you land 3 of the skull Scatters on the reels, you’ll activate the free spins round, where you’ll get 10 free spins. This feature also unlocks the second set of reels, giving you 10 paylines in total for the duration.