Grim Muerto Slots
I often wonder what it must be like to be the fly on the wall at game design meetings, especially for slots like Grim Muerto. Somewhere, at some time, there was a request sent for a new game theme and I want to meet the guy who suggested undead Spanish Mariachi’s, call it a hunch, but I think he would be kind of fun.
Grim Muerto, which as best as I can translate means ‘grim dead’ in Spanish, is a Latino style fiesta, with traditional Mariachi’s supplying the entertainment, if, of course, traditional bards were skeletons, in brightly coloured outfits and still strangely sporting their moustaches in the afterlife.
Nutty theme aside, this is a pretty good format on the surface, 20 fixed paylines, 5 reels, with the promise of expanding wilds on random reels, a free spin feature with re-triggers and extra wilds in the bonus round, will it be the life and soul of the party?
Theme
Play N Go are just as capable of a simple straightforward slot as anyone else, just look at Xmas Joker for example. It seems with this title, they clearly wanted to let the graphics and audio guys off the leash to show they can do the other end of the spectrum too.
The game is filled with small, but very on cue animations, win sequences, sound effects and the whole reel backdrop itself is packed out in carnival trim. The fiesta theme may seem a bit strange at first glance, look closer and you will see that whilst the icons are cartoonlike and cute, there’s an awful lot of skulls floating around in this game.
This goes for the symbols too, aside from the four skeletal mariachi themselves, the scatter is a book, with a skull cover, and the spins re-trigger is, you guessed it, a skull, albeit decorated with some coloured candles.
Traditional 10-Ace playing card symbols fill out the low pay icons, which earns them minus one point in our book, whilst a classic 6 string acoustic guitar, framed by roses, forms the main game wild.
Gameplay & Features
Once you have selected a bet of between 0.20-100.00 credits using the coin system, you can start to hit either spin or autospin and note that one of the reels on each spin is randomly highlighted. This is the random wild feature at work – if a wild lands on the highlighted reel, it will expand and cover the whole reel, on the free spins round this can happen on up to 5 reels at once.
To trigger the free spins round – watch out for the book of skulls scatter, that’s going to give you ten spins, further, there is a second scatter, the candle skull which is only available in the free spins bonus game. This is a retrigger, 1x gives you 3 spins, 2x give you 6 spins and 3x retrigger all ten!
The last neat feature on the game is the second chance, when only two scatters appear on the reels, all four mariachi appear as large symbols for you to pick from, two grant you credits, one is a bust, and the third is an extra scatter to trigger the full bonus. This does appear to be properly random too as it displays the missed icons afterwards.
Summary
This is a cracking 5 reel game, the theme is fun and well integrated, it’s easy to play and has enough features and win potential to keep you entertained. Whilst it may lack the broad appeal of some official movie slots and the big video sequences to go along with them, don’t dismiss this more traditional slot, it has a lot to offer.
