Review of the Mayan Princess

Microgaming's Mayan Princess offers a journey into the steaming jungles of South America where you will have a chance to make off with a pile of Mayan loot. The graphics and sounds of this excellent video slot are part of what makes it stand out from other generic slots in the genre.

For a start, you won't see any of those lame playing card symbols in this game. So many video slots fall back on using playing cards to pad out their lack of creativity, but this game doesn't lack in that department every single symbol you will see while playing it is utterly original.

This makes for a visually splendid playing experience, as you are introduced to a rich collection of imagery including the Mayan Princess herself, a fairly intimidating looking warrior (I think I could take him, though), a savage crocodile with immaculate dentistry, a spotty leopard, some birds, something that could be corn on the cob, and plenty more besides.

I have to say, I find it refreshing to see the level of detail that went into this game. It's not just how pretty the graphics are, but there's all sorts of minor details that have been worked on, such as the way the symbols begin to animate whenever they form part of a winning combination.

The only thing I could say against this game is that I'm sorry there's no bonus round, and I say that purely because with this level of originality going into the imagery, I can only imagine how cool a bonus round would have looked, had they had one.

Wild Symbol:
There is a wild symbol in the form of the Mayan Princess herself. If she sashays her way onto the reels, she can complete winning combination's that would otherwise be missing a symbol.

She's a like a generic be-anything symbol, but she's also valuable in her own right because 5 of her pays out the game's top jackpot of 5,000 coins.

Scatter Symbol:
The scatter symbol is a sort of a pyramid thingy; I think its a temple. It only appears on reels 1 and 5, and you get 10 free spins for each scatter that shows up.

Aside from free spins, scatter symbols don't have any direct coin value.

Free Spins:
Free spins mode is activated by the appearance of scatters. The cool thing about free spins mode is not only that you get between 10 and 20 free spins, but that any winnings are automatically doubled if you hit something during free play. 5 Mayan Princesses, anyone?

Also, the free spins can be added to you'll get 10 extra free spins for every scatter symbol that turns up during free spins mode.