John Hunter and the Mayan Gods Slot – Free Demo

The golden mask never reaches reel 1 or reel 5

Anyone who has ever played a 10-payline Pragmatic Play slot will immediately recognise what's about to happen just by studying the screenshot above. That frame is an ordinary base-game spin at 8.00, with a wild expanded across reel 3 for a 12.00 return and the credit meter reading 99,928.00. The visual presentation and overall production might be fine, but the mathematical model has been tested and examined to exhaustion by now. Only the highest win counts on any one payline, while wins on separate lines are added together. Basically, John Hunter and the Mayan Gods is constructed on the same 5x3 grid with 10 fixed paylines paying left to right from the leftmost reel that the studio has employed again and again, and it also arrives with components used in its other slots, such as the expanding wild for instance as you will observe. Over 310 spins at an 8.00 stake the game gave something back 51 times.

The functionality of the free spin feature itself stays the same with its enormously favoured mixture of wilds and free spin awards. Special reel strips are in play for the whole of the round. Instead, the designers have concentrated on delivering a somewhat fresh experience with the aid of the progressive levels on offer, and I'll dig into that later in the review.

Players can wager between 0.10 and 250.00 per spin, and there's no Feature buy button. I ran the whole of my session at 8.00 a spin. So if you don't fancy waiting for the bonus to arrive there's nothing to do but keep spinning, and we all understand by now that it can consume a sizeable amount of time on slots like this. My longest stretch with nothing back at all was 31 spins, ending on spin 244. The 96.46% RTP sits at the studio's usual level.

Two Mayan faces at the top, card ranks underneath

As earlier noted, the paytable is generic and has been reused from other Pragmatic Play slots, and on the reels we find a goblet, a dagger, a ring and a serpent as well as 2 high-paying characters. The card ranks A, K, Q and J make up the low end beneath them. They are the Mayan king and the hero himself. The pyramid scatter sits outside that set and can land on all five reels.

The game is run on a fixed reel set with 5 reels of 3 rows and 10 paylines that pay from the leftmost reel. Every win is multiplied by the base bet.

Aside from the ordinary symbols, there's a wild included as well. It is depicted by a golden mask. In the captured spin one of those masks filled reel 3 and turned an 8.00 bet into 12.00. The mask only shows on reels 2, 3 and 4, expands to occupy the reel when it can pay, and substitutes for everything except the scatter, something that can produce sizeable wins. Of my 51 paying spins, 33 came back for less than the 8.00 staked.

Twelve spins that start at level 1 and climb to six

The free spin feature is launched in one way only; "organically" by landing at least 3 pyramid scatters on the reels. The pyramid appears on every reel, so no particular position is needed to start it. That grants you 12 free spins, and the scatters pay as well, 2, 20 or 50 times the total bet for 3, 4 or 5 of them. Mine arrived from a balance of 98,988.00, the lowest point of the session.

The round begins at level 1, and every wild that lands nudges it along. Each swap holds until the round is over. One wild lifts the level by 1, two wilds add 3 free spins and lift it by 2, and three wilds add 5 free spins and lift it by 3. The levels run from 1 up to 6. Each level upgrades the reel strips, the goblet yielding to the dagger, then the ring, the serpent, the Mayan king and lastly John Hunter, until the round finishes. The round ends once the free spins run out. In my 310-spin test the feature only appeared once, on spin 259, where it paid 62 times the stake without retriggering. That one round was 31% of everything the session paid back. The session as a whole returned 64.7%, and other players may, of course, have a different experience. The balance closed at 99,124.80 from a 100,000.00 start.

The free spin feature can re-trigger with no cap, granting you an extra 12 free spins should you land 3 or more scatters during the round. The best spin of my session came from the base game instead: 640.00 on spin 69, or 80 times the stake.

Minty’s Expert Conclusion: One trigger across 310 spins paid 62 times the stake and the session still closed at 64.7% of what went through it. The climbing reel strips are what separate this build from John Hunter and the Book of Tut or John Hunter and the Tomb of the Scarab Queen.

One trigger in 310 spins

When all is said and done, this is yet another standard 10-payline Pragmatic Play slot so nothing fresh on the western front. My balance peaked on spin 69 and never climbed back to that level afterwards. The arrangement of the progressive levels does lend it a bit of a twist, and it's conceivable that the distribution of the RTP may have been apportioned slightly differently. A session that spent 31 consecutive spins without a win is what the high volatility rating looks like in practice. It's tough to say. 310 spins is far too small a sample to settle it either way.

Admittedly, though, I would prefer to have seen a somewhat more inventive use of the free spin mechanics.