Skulls Heap Slot Machine – Free Play & Review

There is a fair amount of competition already, in the category hosting Day of the Dead inspired slot machines, but there is always room for one more, if it looks good enough. Skulls Heap certainly has the pretty graphics required to get a player’s attention.

A couple of obvious feature triggers are present, like the Wild logo on a red ruby, or the Free Spins logo. Beyond that, we find images of a Man’s Skull with a mustache, a Mariachi Cactus Plant, a Day of Dead themed guitar, a bottle of Tequila, Candles with flowers around them, and the six Royals (9-A) with a Mexican motif.

Developer

One of the newer partners which help Microgaming with their content, is Gong Gaming Technologies. Skulls Heap is one of several slots that they’ve designed so far, and it’s going to be available only at Microgaming casinos, being an exclusive release.

How To Play It

There will be 40 coins in use, and so the minimum bet allowed is going to be $0.40 ($0.01 per coin). It goes up from that level, to as much as $80 per spin ($2 per coin).

6×4 reels are big enough, that you have a total of 4096 ways to win, or potential combinations. Getting paid means that you have matching symbols on 3 to 6 reels, in consecutive order and starting from reel 1. Quite common right now, this type of setup can have huge potential, and is a lot of fun.

Special Features

You will sometimes notice a beautifully crafted Wild symbol, showing you a gold logo, against a red ruby shaped like a heart. Gold decorations surround this ruby as well. This will be your substitute, a symbol that may be used as a replacement, but it is allowed to land only on the last five reels. Somewhat limited in use, especially as it can’t pay directly, but still useful.

The only other feature symbol will have the Free Spins logo, on a green background. It’s a trigger for 8 to 100 free spins, when you have 3 to 6 of them visible. Get those spins going, and you will get multiplier wilds on the reels, which boost wins by 5x, 3x or 2x, at random. You can retrigger the free spins, and get 5 to 100 more rounds, when you have 2 to 6 extra scatters at the same time. There is no limit to the number of times you can get the free spins to retrigger.

Maximum Payouts

What the game promises, is a jackpot worth 3,000x the stake at most. Of course, it’s quite possible to get there, since you have 4096 potential combinations forming in a spin, and up to 5x wild multipliers boosting payouts during free spins. However, the game will be highly volatile, and not that likely to send big rewards your way. It’s not unfair though, as the average-sized 96.04% RTP tells us.

Summary

Skulls Heap might not feature a terribly original theme, or new features for that matter, but I think that it’s still going to be enjoyable during the period of the Day of Dead, especially if you find yourself at one of the Microgaming-powered casinos. Otherwise, I found the payouts it offers to be somewhat low, considering the volatility involved.