Ecuador Gold Free Play in Demo Mode by ELK Studios

Ecuador Gold review

Theme and Storyline

The Conquistadors who first attempted to conquer the Aztec and Incan empires heard endless stories of a city of gold that they called El Dorado. Modern day Ecuador was the heartland of the Incan Empire, and Ecuador Gold puts you and its protagonist (a generic Indiana Jones knock off) on the tail of the gold which the Incas left behind.

In a temple built in the middle ages, with gold coins scattered across the floor, you play on a grid of ersatz native South American artworks to chase a payout of those Incan coins.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

The graphics are very pretty, the symbols have the look of a 1930s adventure serial’s set dressing and the animations are smooth and high-quality.

The music is a pleasant background noise of vaguely central American elevator music mixed with jungle sounds of birds and running water. All in all, it is highly atmospheric especially if you kill the music when it gets old.

Gameplay

Played initially on a six by four grid Ecuador Gold has 4,096 ways to win. This is because you win for any combo in consecutive reels starting from the leftmost reel.

The number win ways shoots up during the Cascade feature. The Cascade feature means that any symbols involved in a winning combination are destroyed and new symbols drop down from above. When this happens an additional row is added on top of the old rows, creating a six by five grid and increasing the number of winways to 15,625. This goes up to a maximum of eight rows with 262,144 ways to win.

There are also big symbols which act like a grid of 2x2, 3x3 or 4x4 of the symbol in question. If a big symbol is part of a cascade, it destroys all the symbols beneath it, falling to the bottom and allowing new symbols to fill the space it leaves behind.

There is also a range of bonus features and special symbols, that further spice up gameplay.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The Wild symbol substitutes for all other symbols except for the bonus symbol. During free spins, all Wild symbols are sticky.

On random occasions, a Wild on reels three to six may be a Ghost Wild. Ghost Wilds move a random number of squares and leave a Wild on each square they pass over.

The other special symbol is the Bonus symbol. Hit three or more of these anywhere on the reels and you will trigger the Avalanche Bonus. You will get 10 free spins for three symbols, up to 25 for six symbols.

Every free spin that results in a win permanently raises the number of rows by one until you hit the maximum of eight.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The return to player of this game is 96.10%. This is roughly average for the industry by our yardstick.

The range of bet on the site we tested was $/£/€0.20 to $/£/€100.00 which is an excellent range that covers most bankroll sizes.

The volatility of this game is high, making it a perfect accompaniment to our preferred strategies which focus on high variance games.

Conclusion

Ecuador Gold is an exciting and visually striking slot machine. With some cool little features like the changing grid size of the cascade feature.

We particularly like that the return to player is in acceptable bounds and the volatility is nice and high.

We recommend this slot strongly.