PINATA LOCA

HOW TO PLAY PINATA LOCA

The core feature of the main game is that it doesn’t use traditional reels and paylines. You don’t have to worry about hitting lines or any of the usual goals of online slots. Instead, Pinata Loca relies on a system called Scatter Pays, which is also often called Pay Anywhere.

As the name implies, pretty much all of the basic symbols in the game work as Scatter symbols. That means you can get a payout no matter where the symbols land, as long as you hit enough of them. Don’t get too excited, though – you need at least 8 symbols of the same kind to get a payout. As usual, though, additional symbols beyond 8 will increase the size of your reward. However, this caps out at 12 symbols of one kind. Any more than that and the payout does not increase further.

Since you need a lot of symbols per win, Pinata Loca is played on a relatively large game grid. It has 6 columns and 5 rows for a grand total of 30 positions. This makes hitting 8+ symbols easier than it would seem, and the game generally has a decent hit rate.

Tumbling Symbols

Expanse spiced things up even further by adding tumbling symbols, sometimes also called cascades. It’s a common enough feature these days, but combining it with Scatter Pays makes this slot stand out.

Every time you win, all of the winning symbols are removed from the grid. Symbols positioned above them tumble down into their position, and new ones appear from above to fill out the empty positions. These new symbols and positions can then make new winning combinations, hopefully allowing you to win multiple times in a single spin.

There is no limit to how many times this can happen during a single game round, which allows for some huge potential rewards.

Free Spins

Rather stereotypically, free spins in Pinata Loca are awarded for hitting 4 or more Scatter symbols anywhere on the board. Choosing to name this symbol a Scatter in a game where every symbol is technically a Scatter is an interesting choice, but that’s neither here nor there.

The important part is that you instantly get 10 free spins. Note that no additional spins are awarded for additional Scatters. However, hitting 8 or more will still grant you a hefty payout. Also, whenever 3 or more Scatter symbols appear during the free spins round, you get 5 additional spins.

Additionally, special Multiplier symbols can appear during free spins. These look like pinata, and each appears with a random multiplier – 3x, 5x, 8x, 12x, 15x, 20x, 30x, 50x, or 100x. Any time one hits, it’s collected above the reels, increasing any wins during that single sequence (single spin, plus any wins resulting from tumbles.) However, the multiplier disappears on the next spin.

Bonus Buy and Boosted Bets

Pinata Loca offers two additional betting options that you can use at any time. These include:

• A Feature Buy button at the bottom of the screen, which allows you to instantly trigger free spins for 100x the bet
• A Boosted Bet option on the left-hand side. Flipping this option on applies a 25% fee to all bets in the game, but it also doubles the chance to win free spins.

Casino Bloke Best tips for Pinata Loca Slot

• 1The basic symbols all have three levels of rewards – one for 8 or 9 symbols, one for 10 or 11, and one for 12+ symbols.
• 2The Feature Buy option lowers the game’s theoretical RTP to 97.21% while the boosted bet lowers it to 97.16%. This means that these two options are sub-optimal from a strategic standpoint.
• 3That said, the RTP offered through these betting options is still way above the industry average. Feel free to use them if you prefer – your average returns will still be more than solid.

PAYOUTS

Despite the off-beat payout system, payous are still calculated in a relatively familiar fashion. The size of any prize depends on the value and number of winning symbols.

Importantly, there are only three levels of reward. Hitting 8 or 9 symbols of one kind will net you the lowest reward. Hitting 10 or 11 increases that reward, and hitting 12 or more offers the maximum prize for that type of symbol.

Speaking of which, there are 9 regular symbols in total. Each one offers different rewards, so we can’t really split them into categories such as low-paying and high-paying. Listed in order of lowest to highest value, these symbols are the avocado, tortilla chips, poncho, the fan, the maracas, the cactus, the guitar, a bottle of what we assume to be tequila, and the chilli pepper. Also, the Scatter sombrero pays whenever you hit 8 or more, and 12 of these is the highest single win in the entire game.

Finally, it’s important to note that Pinata Loca offers 97.23% RTP, which is downright incredible by slot machine standards.

PINATA LOCA BY EXPANSE STUDIO – CASINO BLOKE’S VERDICT

Pinata Loca is easily one of our favourite Expanse Studio slots – and that says a lot, considering we’re yet to find an Expanse game we dislike.

Our positive impression comes down to two major factors: fun gameplay that strays from most slot machine conventions and excellent RTP.

The gameplay itself is well-balanced in terms of how feature-heavy it is. Combining Scatter Pays and Tumbling Symbols is bound to get some volatile results, so we’re glad they didn’t stick too many additional gimmicks onto the base game. Also, having two betting options besides the usual Spin button grants a bit of additional control to us as players, which is always a good thing.

While these impressions can be dismissed as subjective, there’s one thing that makes the Pinata Loca slot game objectively good – the RTP. 97.23% is way more than what most of the competition is offering. Especially when you consider that most games with features like Scatter PAys tend to suffer in terms of RTP in our experience.

Anyway, if you want to play slots with Scatter Pays, Pinata Loca is easily one of the best options in the business.