Esqueleto Explosivo 2 Demo: Explosivo Wilds and Our 750 Spins

Sugar skulls, 99 ways and symbols that drop

Five reels of sugar skulls, three to a reel, sit above a skeleton mariachi band, and the multiplier ladder runs along the front of the stage below them. The game does not use fixed lines. Thunderkick calls its system connecting pay ways: matching skulls must run from the leftmost reel to the right on adjacent positions, with no gaps, and the rules count 99 pay ways across the board. Only the highest win on each way is paid.

A win does not end the spin. The paying skulls are cleared and new or existing symbols fall into the gaps, which the rules call Dropping Symbols, and the sequence repeats for as long as each drop forms a fresh win. One paid spin can therefore contain several steps, and the multiplier works across those steps rather than across separate spins.

The top of the pay table is the skull in an orange headscarf with red flowers and gold earrings. At a €1.00 bet it pays 5.00 for five on a way, 2.00 for four and 1.00 for three. The pink skull with a rose between its teeth pays 2.50, 0.90 and 0.50. The rest of the table sits lower on a scrolling rules page that our capture did not reach, so we leave those values out rather than guess.

The golden skull with a quiff and pink sunglasses is the Explosivo Wild. It stands in for every symbol except the scatter, and when it lands it blows up the symbols around it: at least 3 and at most 8, depending on where it sits on the grid. Two kinds of symbol survive the blast, the scatters and the high-pay skulls, so a headscarf skull next to a wild stays where it is while its neighbours are cleared and refilled.

The Mucho Multiplier climbs from x1 to x32

Below the reels runs a row of six values: x1, x2, x4, x8, x16 and x32. The rules give two ways to move one step to the right. A win on a symbol drop does it, and so does the arrival of one or more Explosivo Wilds. Each move doubles the value, up to x32 in the main game. Every frame we took at the start of a base-game spin shows x1 lit again.

In practice the ladder rarely went far in our session. Most winning spins finished at x1 or x2, a win was multiplied by x16 on a single spin, and the ladder reached x32 only once, on the last drop of spin 219, which paid nothing. Every one of our wins of 10x or more ended with the ladder at x4 or higher.

Our 750 spins at €1.00: 79.9% back

We played 750 paid spins at €1.00 each in Thunderkick's demo, which starts every session with €5,000.00 of play money. The stakes came back at 79.9%: €599.10 returned on €750.00 staked. That is below the published 96.13%, and a sample of this size cannot confirm or contradict a long-run figure. It shows one session, nothing more.

• 750paid spins at €1.00 in the demo
• 79.9%of the stakes paid back
• 26.6xbest single spin
• 1free spins round triggered

Wins came on 31.3% of spins (235 times) and the median win was 0.8x, so a typical hit returned less than the stake. The longest stretch without any win was 11 spins. The balance peaked at €5,013.40 on spin 261 and drifted down from there, reaching its low of €4,849.10 on spin 750, the last one.

Free spins started naturally once, on spin 51. Three scatters gave the standard 10 spins, a third collected wild added one more for 11 in total, and the round paid 6.3x. No win inside it was multiplied by more than x2. Our best result was a base-game spin instead: 26.6x on spin 424, a chain of drops whose last win was multiplied by x8. Nothing in the session reached 50x.

Buying the Bonus Game for 75x the bet

The Buy Feature button opens a dialog with one option, the Bonus Game, priced at 75x the current stake. Thunderkick's demo server describes the purchase as a round with at least three scatters, and ours began with 10 free spins, the number the rules give for three.

The RTP of the bought round is 96.35%, a little above the 96.13% of normal play. Both figures describe the version on Thunderkick's own game page, which is the one this demo runs. For casinos, Thunderkick certifies further versions with a lower RTP (94.11%, 92.09%, 90.13%). The operator picks one of them, and some markets switch the feature buy off altogether.

Our single purchase in the media session paid €32.60, well under half the price, even though the ladder reached x32 on one of its spins. One bought round is one draw. It tells you how the feature looks and feels, not what it pays on average, so treat the clip above as a demonstration rather than a forecast.

Scatters, the wild meter and the locked x64

The scatter is a white wind-up skull with red gem eyes and a key in its side. It cannot be replaced by the wild, and the blast of an Explosivo Wild leaves it alone. Three or more anywhere on the reels start the Bonus Game; the rules screen lists how many spins each count is worth in the main game and inside the bonus.

Inside the Bonus Game the ladder gains a seventh value, x64, shown behind four padlocks. Explosivo Wilds that land are collected in small slots under the steps. Every third wild awards an extra free spin and removes the lowest multiplier, so the starting value moves from x1 to x2, then to x4, and so on. The x64 step opens only once x32 has become that starting value, and a full meter gives one last extra spin. Every scatter beyond five adds 2 spins in either mode.

The rest of the rules cover the buttons. The space bar starts a round on a desktop, a stop button halts the reels and a skip button skips the presentation. Autoplay is listed with a note that it may not be available.

How it sits beside the other Thunderkick slots on this site

The closest relative here is Pink Elephants 2, which has the same 96.13% RTP but a 6x4 board with 4,096 connecting pay ways, a high volatility rating and a cap of 10,000x. Its buy menu has 4 levels, starting at 60x.

For the same medium rating with symbols that fall after wins, Carnival Queen uses avalanches on 4,096 pay ways and allows up to 22,700x. Its default version returns 94.16%, noticeably less than the 96.13% here.

At the other end sits Kraken's Lair: 9 paylines, a very high rating, a 7,777x cap and no feature buy at all. Next to it, Esqueleto Explosivo 2 is the gentler option by Thunderkick's own rating, with a lower ceiling.

Who will enjoy Esqueleto Explosivo 2

Esqueleto Explosivo 2 suits players who like to watch a spin develop. Most of its action happens inside a single paid spin, as wilds clear space, skulls drop and the multiplier creeps along the stage. The 5,000x cap is the lowest of the slots reviewed here, and our session paid back in small amounts far more often than in big ones. If you want long quiet stretches broken by one huge hit, this is not that game.

In the demo, a hundred spins at the default stake show how often the ladder gets past x4, and one bought Bonus Game shows the wild meter and the locked x64. Both cost play money only.

• Pink Elephants 2 demo review
• Midas Golden Touch demo review
• Kraken's Lair demo review

Questions about the Esqueleto Explosivo 2 demo

Short answers, taken from the rules screens, Thunderkick's figures and our own session.