Ecuador Gold by ELK Studios - Online Slot Review

Ecuador Gold takes us on a fantastic journey filled with exciting features and a fresh game model that may turn every spin into a thrilling sequence. On the side of the Indiana Jones-like character, we get to explore the remains of an ancient culture and test our fortune in a place with a promising name. How lucky can the Temple of Luck actually be? Quite reasonably, but not as much as you'd expect from such a direct and powerful label because the slot's max win caps at 2,500 times the bet. Considering today's online gambling standards, it's pretty conservative. It seems like the team from ELK Studios put more emphasis on the journey rather than the destination because Ecuador Gold is a genuinely fresh breeze regarding mechanical and visual game design.

The main view welcomes us to the temple's interior, supported by massive pillars wrapped with carvings resembling snake skin, towering on both sides of the screen. All symbols fall into the space between them, and as you start to win, the perspective will zoom out slightly on every consecutive cascade, revealing more of the captivating ambiance. You'll see massive round torches illuminating the area, huge sculptures of some ancient figures, and the thing you came here for - piles of gold coins scattered around on the floor. Before the blocks set into place, you can catch a glimpse of a mysterious golden altar and totems made of giant masks further in the background. After you hit the spin button, all visible icons fall into the abyss of an enormous flaming pit to be lost forever. The light but rhythmic soundtrack played on some native, wooden instruments goes along nicely with mild effects of dropping symbols and more classic chimes on wins. As you can see, the journey mentioned before is quite impressive but not only regarding the audiovisual setting, as Ecuador Gold also delivers innovative gameplay mechanics.

How To Win On Ecuador Gold Slot - Features & Mechanics

After your first hit, you'll notice that the main 6x4 playing area starts growing. Every consecutive cascade within the same sequence adds an extra row, up to 8. On a fully-expanded view, that means a staggering 262,144 win ways, so over twice as much as classic Megaways slots, which offer 117,649. The gameplay feels dynamic and eventful, even if spins end up with a relatively low win after several reactions. To mitigate that feeling, some cool features come to the rescue.

Colossal Symbols

Any regular symbols may drop in their larger form. They can appear as 2x2, 3x3, or even 4x4, and when they land, they will crush all smaller symbols below until they reach the bottom. Colossals count not as one instance but as many as fit inside it, for example, a 3x3 equals 9 icons.

Ghosting Wild

It's a roaming Wild that moves a random number of steps into different positions and leaves its copy behind on each of them. It's a super-exciting feature because if you land it on one of the farther reels (although the closest to the beginning it can appear on is third) and are lucky to have it move straight or diagonally to the left, it will create a path of Wilds connecting the top 6-of-a-kind wins. On top of that, it can also transform Colossal Symbols.

Ecuador Gold Free Drops

You can trigger the free spins with 3, 4, 5, or 6 Bonus symbols, which grant 10, 15, 20, or 25 drops, respectively. The starting screen is the same as the main game and consists of 4 rows. You can still increase them in the same way with one advantageous twist - every time you hit a win on a fresh spin, the Safety Level will increase and not reset until the end of the bonus. Once you grow the reels to 8-symbol high, they will stay at this size. There's one more essential detail that will undoubtedly put a smile on your face. Any Wilds you land are sticky and don't even disappear after contributing to a win. That's right, you will enjoy their presence until the end of the bonus, so hopefully, you hit a lot as early as possible.

Ecuador Gold On Mobile

The game has been designed with a mobile-first attitude as it presents itself marvelously on all devices. It uses the latest HTML5 technology so that you can enjoy the hunt for riches on any smartphone or tablet. The landscape mode, as usual, is a direct copy of the desktop view with identical element distribution and aspect ratio. However, the portrait orientation is where the slot shows its best qualities, especially when starting to increase in height. You can really admire the design effort once the reels appear in the entire 8-symbol state.

Final Thoughts

The team from ELK Studios created something groundbreaking here. Ecuador Gold is a thrilling composition of excellent graphical design and meticulously-crafted features creating a coherent and unique online gambling experience. Certainly, this game model will pave the way for many more iterations done by the antlered Swedish masterminds, but it will also be a strong inspiration for other studios. We only wish that Kane's next adventures will take us to equally charming places and that the math designers put a slightly stronger kick into the profile and pamper us with a higher max win potential. Whether that happens or not, you can still have a lot of fun in Ecuador, and even without hitting the cap, the free drops bonus seems very rewarding on average.