Do you remember the Dug from The Phantom Menace who uses dirty tricks to have young Anakin disqualified from the pod race? Although they have a similar-sounding name, Xibalba from Peter & Sons is nothing like George Lucas’s Sebulba. Instead, the Mayan underworld is called Xibalba, which means “place of fear” and is controlled by the gods of death and their minions. Be wary of caves in the area of Coban in Guatemala, as this is where legend has it the entrance to Xibalba can be found. No need to panic if all this seems a little intimidating to you. The voyage to Hades will be more endearing than frightening thanks to Peter & Sons, who have created everything in their signature humorous, cartoon manner.
Peter & Sons have, as is their wont, put their own spin on a common topic. This time around, players will experience Peter & Sons’ wacky take on Central American culture. For instance, there are jovial figures on each side of the game grid who keep an eye on things, cheer when specific wins occur, and float in midair while the bonus round is in play. The gaming panel’s icons burst with life, or at least the large payouts do. In Xibalba, the Yucatán rainforest is portrayed as a place where everything is alive, or at least physiologically motivated to reproduce and evolve. Except that in this instance the players are being hosted in the underworld, so perhaps we should abandon that mental excursion.
When you spin the reels of Xibalba, you’ll see a 3-row, 5-reel setup that grows to accommodate winning combos. Starting with 243 possibilities to win, players may eventually expand the grid to a maximum of 7,767. The theoretical return to player value of the game engine is 96.2%, and players can wager anywhere from 10 p/c to £/€50 every spin.
For a payout, at least three identical symbols must appear on neighboring reels, clockwise from the leftmost reel. The lowest paying combination is a set of five square items that have no obvious connection to one another, and pays out between four and six times the initial wager for a full house. If you get five of the same animal symbol, you’ll win 10x to 100x your wager. Wild serpents appear on reels 2, 3, and 5 and may substitute for any other symbols except the scatter. There are both traditional wilds and cultivating wilds. When utilized in a winning cascade, these unique wilds stay put and turn all symbols above them into wilds.
Slot Functions in Xibalba
Since cascade wins activate more rows, methods, and win multipliers, Xibalba has a growing feel to it. When the bonus round begins, every factor benefits.
Constantly Heightening Waterfalls
When a winning combination is paid out, the symbols that contributed to that win are taken off the board and replaced with new ones. In addition, the winning reel receives an additional symbol. This continues until no new winning combination appears, at which point the reels revert to their original size and another spin is performed. The maximum number of rows on a reel is 6. A progressive win multiplier is also at work here, beginning at x1 and growing by +1 on each cascade. In the base game, the multiplier is reset between paid spins.
Gigantor
When two Sun scatters land on neighboring reels, the Gigantor bonus is activated. This can happen on reels 2, 3, or 4. Scatters on neighboring reels combine into 2×2 mega symbols during the respin. With each respin, the middle reel expands to fill the entire screen, making for a total of nine possible paylines.
Bonus Turns
At the conclusion of a cascading sequence, if 3 scatter symbols are visible, the player is given 15 free games. The bonus round incorporates all the elements found in the main game, with the added perk that the win multiplier does not reset in between free spins. If three scatters show up at this time, 15 bonus spins will be added to your current total.
Slot Decision in Xibalba
Peter & Sons can always make something interesting out of a topic that has been done to death. You’ll know right away that P&S were responsible for Xibalba’s production quality and design aesthetic. The unique visuals are complemented by a series of exciting features that come with substantial odds of success. It’s difficult to find major issues with the game. If you don’t dig the visual style, you might want to avoid anything branded with Peter & Sons’ name, because this is really their thing.
One of Xibalba’s best features, Growing Wild, exceeded users’ expectations. A lucky player may have a run of consecutive wins when new rows are added and new wilds are added to the wild stack, expanding the number of possible combinations. Good things can happen when a large number of Growing Wilds appear alongside a high win multiplier. In addition, it’s great that you can get almost all of the additional features in the regular game itself, however getting Growing Wilds during free spins increases the odds that you’ll already have a high win multiplier in place. Therefore, Xibalba has great potential. Strangely, the game boasts victories of over 20,000x but the game’s documentation claims the maximum won in a billion simulated game rounds was 10,000x.
Time and time again, Peter & Sons has delivered a top-notch slot machine that is uniquely theirs. Xibalba’s visual style is unlike any other Mayan-themed game, and the game’s cast of colorful characters and concentration on aspects that perform well individually but shine in concert is what sets it apart.
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