Esqueleto Explosivo 3

Theme and Design

The Esqueleto Explosivo series has always showcased the best of Thunderkick’s creative talent. The setting is a Mexican Day of the Dead festival in a small town at night. Fireworks pop overhead whilst a band of 5 skeletal mariachi players sit beneath the reels. The only pay symbols are brightly painted skulls which click into place each time they drop. There’s plenty of charm to the game and it’s a really fun one to play. Not much has changed as this slot series has progressed, but it doesn’t need to, it’s top quality as it is.

RTP and Variance

Esqueleto Explosivo 3 has an RTP rate of 94.22% which whilst a little under the top rates expected from online slots (normally around 96%), is still reasonable. You should see a decent return on your wagering.

The game has a high variance so the win distribution may be uneven, bowing hot and cold in streaks. Interestingly this series has shifted from low variance in the first Esqueleto Explosivo to high in parts 2 and 3. So if you want a more balanced payout distribution, load up original!

Maximum Win

Esqueleto Explosivo 3 has the highest max win yet in the series at 7,500x. This is higher than the second (5,000x) and the first (just 700x). It’s still not a huge potential payout, giving you just a £750 win from a 10p stake, but Thunderkick aren’t known for the same sky-high potential as rivals like Relax Gaming or Nolimit City for example.

Symbols and Paytable

Esqueleto Explosivo 3 is a cluster pays game. It plays on a 5 reel and 5 row game area where wins are triggered by landing 5 or more identical symbols in vertically or horizontally adjacent positions.

There are just SIX symbols in the table, each one a painted skull. They are valued at from 0.2x for 5 lilac skulls up to 150x for 15 or more of the skull with a wig and red roses!

There are also exploding wilds which substitute for pay symbols to complete clusters. More on that in the next section.

Features and Gameplay

There are strong similarities in the gameplay across all the Esqueleto Explosivo slots, using cluster pays and avalanches with multiplier wilds to drive the action. Here is how it works:

Avalanche Wins, Wilds and Mucho Multipliers

After any winning cluster is formed, the winning symbols are removed from the grid. Then a Wild, or an Exploding Wild, is added into the vacated cluster area before new symbols drop down into the remaining empty spaces on the grid.

The Mucho Multiplier meanwhile is an old favourite that fans of the original Explosivo games will know and love. It’s a simple progressive multiplier applied to all wins and it appears below the reels. It starts at 1x and with each avalanche win the multiplier doubles to 2x, 4x, 8x and so on.

The maximum multiplier in the base game is 32x, but it can go as high as a whopping 1,024x in the free spins round.

Explosivo Wilds

These special wild symbols appear when a winning cluster is removed from the grid. When they appear, they explode, taking out all symbols in a 3x3 area around them EXCEPT for high paying symbols, other Wilds or scatters.

Free Spins Bonus Round

As usual the best wins are going to come via the free spins bonus round. This is triggered by hitting 3 or more scatter symbols – the wind-up skull! 3 scatters gets you 10 spins and 4 gets you 12. Any extra scatters beyond that will get you another 2 spins each. So, 5 scatters in total earns you 14 spins for example.

The gameplay is the same, except that your multiplier is now more powerful - double in size in fact, up to 1,024x - and there is an additional meter beneath the reels where Explosivo Wilds are collected. Filling this meter gets you another spin each time and you can fill it 5 times for 5 more spins.