Contact

Play’n GO is adding with the Contact slot another title to the vast collection of games with an Aztec or Mayan theme. The early Mesoamerican civilizations were full of culture, gods and myths that made them a prime target for slot designers. Hidden temples and treasures deep in the Central American jungle only made them more attractive as it brought an aura of mystique and suspense to the gameplay.

This time, Mayan gods are at the heart of the Contact slot, a 5×7 grid game with tumbling reels, cluster pays, win multipliers and two bonus rounds with a range of extras that can lead to wins of up to 1,517.5 times your bet. Your aim will be to build up winning symbol clusters to reach the top level and trigger the free spins.

Slot Details

Contact is a grid slot with a 5×7 format without paylines and in a mobile-optimized set-up. Instead, wins are awarded for clusters of minimum five matching symbols. You can challenge yourself to decipher the Mayan symbols from 0.20 to 100 credits. The high variance game comes with an RTP of 96.55%.

The game has an interesting pay mechanic which we could call tumbling reels in reverse. Usually, with cascading grid slots, winning combinations explode to make room for new symbols to drop into the empty spaces. On the Contact slot, the mechanic is reversed and winning cluster are seen dropping to the bottom of the reels after non-winning symbols are removed from the grid. New symbols drop in from the top, continuing until either the entire grid is filled or no more winning symbols are added to the cluster.

In the base game, filling two, four and six of the rows will trigger an x2, x3x and x4 win multiplier, which are not multiplied by each other. Instead, only the highest one will be applied. Wins are paid and potentially multiplied once the spin sequence has concluded.

Graphics and Visuals

Open the game to find yourself in the midst of the jungle, standing in front of a Mayan tower that holds the pay symbols and leads to the temples in the background. The impressive stone structure is flanked by two flames coming from a skull and lush greenery. A dramatic tribal soundtrack heightens the suspense on the reels.

Pay Symbols

The low-value symbols look like animal fossils from turtles, snakes, birds, monkeys and jaguars that are carved into stone. They are followed by four Mayan god masks in green, gold-green, red and purple colours. Pays are calculated per symbols with the purple being the most valuable at 1.5x your bet for one mask. Hitting a cluster of five will thus pay 7.5x your stake. There are no wilds or scatters on the Contact slot as the free spins are triggered by reaching the top of the Mayan tower.

The Contact Bonus Round and Super Bonus Round

Yes, you read that right. Play’n Go were very creative in naming the bonus features. The first is triggered when winning symbols reach the top of the tower on at least one reel while the second will be awarded for a full grid of winning symbols. They can be clusters of different symbols as long as at least one reaches the top.

The Bonus Round comes with three free spins and x2, x3, x4, and x5 multipliers when you fill symbols up to row two, three, five and six. A range of extras that are displayed on the right tower wall is triggered when you fill row one, four and seven. The extras will be randomly selected from three options.

• Block Destroyer feature – destroys the bottom multiplier blocks on the left and lets a block with a higher multiplier drop on top, thus increasing the win multipliers.
• Symbol Upgrade feature – one winning clusters is upgraded to the next higher-paying symbol.
• Extra Free Spins feature – awards +1 free spin.

Filling up the grid during the Bonus Round will trigger the Super Bonus Round with six free spins. Plus, for each row filled with winning symbols, you will get a multiplier and one of the three features in a more powerful version.

• Block Destroyer feature – destroys the three bottom multiplier blocks instead of one. Remember, the maximum is x30.
• Symbol Upgrade feature – upgrades all winning clusters each to the next higher-value symbol.
• Extra Free Spins feature – awards +3 free spins.

Final Verdict

The Contact slot is bound to lead to different opinions. Some will see it as the holy grail of grid slots, while other will see a rather boring base game with a maximum win potential in the Super Bonus Round that looks so far out of reach that winning the lottery might be easier. Play’n GO is an expert in grid slots but designing a high-variance game with a win potential of just over 1,500x the bet seems like a plan gone wrong.

Bonuses

Winners

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