Los Cuatro Esqueletos: Slot Overview

Los Cuatro Esqueletos, which, when translated to the English language, comes out as 'The Four Skeletons', is a Mexican-themed online slot from developer Relax Gaming. Getting even granular, Los Cuatro Esqueletos burrows into Mexican culture and comes up with one of the more popular aspects of it – the Day of the Dead holiday that takes place around the start of November. If you've played your fair share of online slots, there is a good chance you've bumped into this celebration before. It's become something of a goto amongst software developers looking to get a bit cultural, a bit colourful, and inject an upbeat Mariachi tune or two.

After testing driving other Day of the Dead slots like Thunderkick's Esqueleto Explosivo 2, Play'n GO's Muerto en Mictlan, or Muertos Multiplier Megaways from Pragmatic Play, we come to Relax Gaming's interpretation of it. Los Cuatro Esqueletos is it, and spoiler alert, it's a 'book of' slot with an energetic Mexican exterior rather than Ancient Egypt. This means a game grid situated in the middle of a colourful town somewhere south of the Rio Grande, where the townsfolk hang flags on strings between buildings, which are all painted in eye-catching patterns and bright colours. It's pretty festive, not the most Day of the Dead-ish slot we've ever seen, but Los Cuatro Esqueletos ticks most of the boxes required of these sorts of slots audio-visually without doing anything majorly special. The same goes for the tunes. Adequate, with a bit of a horn section. On we go.

Available with or without Relax Gaming's Dream Drop jackpot network attached, the non-jackpot version has a surprisingly low RTP value of 94%. A medium volatile slot machine, the gaming is held on a 5-reel, 3-row grid with 10 paylines – a classic 'book of' set-up. Wins must start from the leftmost side of the matrix and contain at least 3 low pays or 2 high pay symbols. When placing a bet the lowest stake allowable is 20 p/c while the highest wager possible is $/€100.

The name Los Cuatro Esqueletos makes a bit more sense after inspecting the paytable. Here is where we meet 4 skeleton characters as the 4 high-paying symbols, joined by 10 to A card rank symbols that look like they've been imprinted on coloured gravestones. Hit a 5 OAK win, and the rewards are 75 to 500 times the stake for the skeletons or 10 to 15 times the bet for the royals.

Los Cuatro Esqueletos: Slot Features

As mentioned above, Los Cuatro Esqueletos is a 'book of' style game, so players can expect expanding full reel symbols in the free spins round, with a couple of twists adding a modicum of originality.

Free Spins

Pinatas are Los Cuatro Esqueletos' wild, and they're also the game's free spins scatter. As wild, they can substitute any non-expanded pay symbol to help complete winning lines. When used as the scatter, landing 3 or more of them awards 10 free spins. During the free spins round, hitting 3 or more scatters retriggers 10 additional free spins.

Now, at the start of a bonus round, a bunch of pinatas are displayed on the screen, and players pick one of them. This will reveal which symbol is the special expander during free spins. At the end of a spin, after any wins have been awarded, if any, expanding symbols spread to cover all positions on their reel. If the expander is a premium symbol, it will need to be present on at least 2 reels or 3+ reels if the expander is a low-pay symbol. Expanded symbols pay all lines from any position.

Super Free Spins

Scatter symbols are also collected when they hit, and when 600 of them have been accrued, players are awarded 10 Super free spins. These are exactly the same as regular free spin, except 2 symbols are selected from the pick n click event before the round begins. Super free spins can be retriggered, awarding +10 free spins and an additional expanding symbol. The bet used in Super free spins is an average of the bets during the collection - extra info on this can be found in the paytable.

Los Cuatro Esqueletos: Slot Verdict

Hate to be the killjoy around here, but did the planet really need one more expanding symbol in free spins, aka another 'book of' slots'? In the right circumstances, if the game in question offers something intriguingly new, is presented in an outstanding way, or possesses that 'I don't know what' x-factor quality, yeah, sure, why not? Unfortunately, Los Cuatro Esqueletos doesn't really have any of those things. Relax Gaming is a bona fide top-tier provider, producing world-dominating slots like the unstoppable Money Train range, so apologies for stating the obvious, but Los Cuatro Esqueletos is one of the studio's lesser releases.

A couple of issues are obviously apparent. One is the sub-par RTP value. Perhaps if a slot blazes a white-hot trail, it would be easier to justify overlooking a lame return value, like with some of what ELK Studios does. But geez, Los Cuatro Esqueletos is entering a slot genre absolutely overflowing with choices for fans of the format. Most recreational gamblers may not be too bothered about RTP, but still, why pick a 94% one over the huge number of better-value slots? Even Los Cuatro Esqueletos' 'twist' is somewhat dubious. Collecting 600 scatters is likely to require a certain amount of commitment, and one wonders if this system has any sort of effect on the RTP. Make it all the way, and the reward is alright, without being super special, considering other slots already do this sort of thing. Not a ton, yet prior examples include Legacy of Dead, Sword of Khans, and Rise of Merlin (amongst others) if you're interested.

On the plus side, a max win of 10,000x the bet is quite high for a slot like this, so that's something. Otherwise, Los Cuatro Esqueletos is a rather mediocre release from Reflex Gaming, a studio otherwise famous for consistently releasing slots which blow others out of the water. Los Cuatro Esqueletos, by contrast, sort of just treads water alongside them.