Luchadora slot review

Luchadora is a game that draws inspiration from the Mexican wrestlers called Luchadores. The slot doesn’t only feature a number of these performers but also includes random wilds, free spins and multipliers.

Originally created and released by Thunderkick in 2017, Luchadora seeks to bring to life a pretty important part of Mexican culture. Just like how Americans enjoy wrestling, their southern neighbours also embraced this type of entertainment. Now it’s brought to life on a 5-reel, 4-row playing field with a standard 30 paylines and a number of special features.

As far as the presentation goes I thought this game does a good job at sticking close to the art style and type of costumes I would associate with Mexican wrestling. The characters in the slot all play a prominent role as well as having their own distinct personality and masks. There are even some animations whenever they are part of a win or turned into a random wild to keep the board seem more alive.

The music also plays a big part in the immersion, with an authentic-sounding Mariachi band playing in the background. Whenever a special character is activated or the game triggers a win we’ll hear an announcer talk in Spanish. All of these elements really added to the total experience and made it feel like I was participating in an actual match.

Symbols

Luchadora brings the Mexican-inspired setting to life by fully committing to the colourful art style we often see in their art. The different symbols can be divided into the usual split of low- and high-paying symbols where the high-paying symbols are the different wrestlers. Meanwhile, the low-paying symbols are different kinds of peppers which I thought was a little odd.

The game is listed as Medium Volatility which somewhat fits my experience. There will be times where wins are hard to come by but when they do appear they aren’t likely to be very high either. The bigger wins will likely be attained during the free spins mode which is triggered pretty easily but don’t expect it to be common. Over time I managed to stay pretty close to my starting funds.

Players can select a bet between £0.10 and £100 per spin which should help deal with the volatility. Power players can increase the size of their bets to profit off bigger wins while those that aren’t as comfortable playing on the edge can pick a more moderate bet to prolong the use of their funds. Either way has its own up- and downsides.

The symbols in the game are ranked as such:

• Lucha Smackdown: Get a Lucha Smackdown symbol on the screen for one of the special features to activate.
• Lucha Bonus: With 3 or more Lucha Bonus symbols on the playing field the free spins mode is activated.
• Wild: Wilds substitute all regular symbols in the game. Max. 25x your bet with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• La Luchadora: Max. 25x your bet with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• El Toro: Max. 25x your bet with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• El Rayo: Max. 20x your bet with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• El Serpiente: Max. 17.5x your bet with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• El Pantera: Max. 15x your bet with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Red Pepper: Max. 3.5x your bet with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Orange Pepper: Max. 3x your bet with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Yellow Pepper: Max. 2.5x your bet with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.
• Green Pepper: Max. 2x your bet with five-of-a-kind on a winning bet line.

Features

Luchadora tries something new with its features which do make it a bit complicated to explain. There are a lot of features that interact with each other in some ways that won’t be immediately obvious to most players.

The features include:

• Wilds: Wilds will substitute the regular symbols in the game.
• Random Wilds: The four tiles in the corners of the playing field are lit up. Whenever a Luchadore symbol appears in one of those corners, it will turn all other instances of that symbol on the screen into Wilds. This can happen to multiple Luchadore symbols at the same time.
• Bonus Feature: The Lucha Smackdown symbol will grant either free spins, a multiplier or will transform a Luchadore into a Wild during the free spins mode.
• Free Spins: With 3 or more Bonus symbols on the screen the player will activate the free spins mode. If any Luchadore is turned into a Wild during this mode, it will stay as a Wild for the entire duration of the free spins.

Players will spend most of their time on the main screen with the free spins mode being activated only occasionally. There are two ways to activate this mode. Either the Lucha Smackdown feature can start it, or the player can get 3 Lucha Bonus symbols on the screen. I found that it was most likely to get the bonus symbols on the screen.

Overall, the gameplay is quite nice but I never felt very engaged by it. The feature that turns different Luchadores into Wilds is a good idea but I didn’t get the impression it was being useful very often. There are times when the symbols are simply turned into Wilds randomly which often was more helpful than the corner tiles.

In Conclusion

Luchadora is a nice-looking slot with a strong sense of theme and setting. All the details are there, with some fun and colourful graphics to bring that to the player. The music also plays a big part in the immersion and helped a lot in setting the mood.

The features were okay but I never really felt like they offered anything special to the game. If anything, it felt rather unnecessarily complicated for what amounted to a very small impact on the gameplay.

Players that are looking for big payouts will likely not find it here. The game offers a max. win of 1,995x your bet which is below average when compared to other slots with medium volatility. That said, people that are interested in the setting will likely have a good enough time playing this slot.