Luchadora Slot – Free Demo

Masked wrestlers and a ring with marked corners

Luchadora is a video slot that tilts more to the traditional side with a highly familiar appearance and feel to it, and it has players travelling down to the ring of Mexican lucha libre, a world devoid of nuance and one that is utterly overrun by masked wrestlers. Beneath the wrestlers the low symbols are coloured peppers. The Underdog is clearly the star of the show. He is supported by three colour-coded opponents. Colour is what the wild mechanic keys on rather than value, so which wrestler lands where matters more than what it is worth on a line. If the stats are anything to go by, Luchadora is a rather average slot, but numbers aren't everything. Two spins early in my session, 17 and 33, paid 28.00 each. Matters have been so and so when it comes to the genuine potential of slots from Thunderkick.

Being a lucha libre slot there are no points for guessing what the backdrop scene is: it's the ring, bordered by four golden corner squares that do rather more than adorn. Only those corner positions do anything, and a wrestler that lands elsewhere on the reels is just a paying symbol. I could probably devote a whole section speaking about all the obvious resemblances with other slots, as there are odds and ends taken from more than one provider, Esqueleto Explosivo 2 included. But I'll let you be the judge of that.

How a colour turns wild

Play occurs in a game grid composed of 5 reels, 4 rows, and 30 fixed paylines, and symbols come in stacks. I played the whole session at 1.00 a spin. As long as matching symbols land adjacent to each other from the leftmost reel they can create combinations. Wagering 330.00 across 330 spins returned 387.80. A selection of bet levels is offered from a minimum of 0.10 to a maximum of 100.00 per spin, and volatility receives 3 lightning bolts out of 5, medium by the provider's own estimation. The peak balance was 1,101.60, on spin 265.

The paytable is topped by the wrestlers, worth up to 25 times the stake for five across a payline. El Toro is the 25x one, with the other three at 20x, 17.5x and 15x. Chilli peppers are beneath them at roughly 3.5x. Players are aided by the Wrestler Wilds, which come through those golden corner squares. A wrestler landing on a corner makes every wrestler of that colour wild and clears the square, and in the base game that lasts for the one spin only. A colour that turns wild in the base game is back to an ordinary symbol on the next spin. With all four wrestlers turned wild, the Underdog becomes La Luchadora, the highest symbol. That means all four corners going in the same spin, since nothing carries over outside the bonus. The base game can grow a little dull at times.

The belt starts it, the Smackdown extends it

The genuine potential of Luchadora can be found within its free spins round, while the base game does carry some punch. Mine landed on spins 111, 187 and 273. The key to unlocking the best the game can provide is the championship belt scatter, and during the base game 3 or more of them award 7, 11 or 15 free spins. The usual split has three belts paying 7 spins, four paying 11 and five paying 15.

Along with the numbers of free spins, the true magic lies in the wild symbol, which still functions as before. Wrestlers still have to land on a corner to turn a colour wild. But during free spins the wrestler transformations are sticky for the remainder of the round. Turn two colours wild early and both of them are still wild on every spin that is left. The bonus round cannot be retriggered by scatters. The only thing that lengthens a round is the Smackdown. The Lucha Smackdown on reel 5 can add 2, 3, 5 or 7 free spins, or pay 2x, 3x, 5x or 15x the bet, or award a wrestler wild transformation. It appears on reel 5 only, so nothing on the first four reels can produce it. In the base game the same feature pays 2x, 3x, 5x or 15x the bet, or awards 7, 11 or 15 free spins.

Three rounds across 330 spins

Luchadora is comparable to other mid-volatile Thunderkick slots such as Turning Totems in terms of gameplay mechanics. My longest run without a win was 12 spins, ending on spin 244. What this means is gaming sessions that can meander along without doing much harm in either direction, and when it comes to winning big, Thunderkick cap wins at 1,995 times the bet. Across 330 spins at a 1.00 stake the largest single hit was 66x, on spin 265. Nothing else in the session reached 40x. And 106 spins paid something, half of them less than the stake. That leaves 54 spins in 330 that returned the stake or better.

The route to big wins is clearly the free spins and what the Smackdown adds to them, and three rounds came in 330 spins. The first paid 25x and moved the balance from 1,031.20 to 1,055.20. The gaps stretched to 76 and 86 spins, though. The third round left the balance on 1,098.80. Rounds of 4.4x are possible — the third one here paid exactly that. That was the round of 11 free spins. The best of the three paid 33x. That one ran on 7 free spins, the shortest award the game deals, and took the balance from 1,037.60 to 1,069.60. The three together produced 62.40, 16% of everything won.

Don't manage to reach those heights and the game is quite content to soak up bankrolls though, and Luchadora is not one of those all-or-nothing slots. The other 84% of what I won came out of the base game. The balance never fell below 990.00 from a 1,000.00 beginning and ended on 1,057.80, a session return of 117.5%.

Minty’s Expert Conclusion: Three bonus rounds across 330 spins produced 62.40 between them, 16% of everything the session won, and the best of them paid 33x on an award of 7 free spins. The other 84% came off the base game, where a corner square turns a colour wild for one spin and then hands it back.