Carnival Queen Slot Review
Carnival Queen is a video slot from Thunderkick with 6 reels and 4,096 ways to win. Released in February 2019, this game can be played at online casinos such as LeoVegas, Guts or Mr Green.
Theme and basic information
No, we’re not in Rio for the Carnival. This is Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The street views to both sides of the reels should be enough indication of that. The shadowy crowds roaming the streets, dancing and celebrating at each win, add to the theme.
On the reels you get a bunch of characters all dressed up in colourful masks and wigs that stand in as the high-value symbols. Equally colourful but somewhat boring are the playing card symbols from 9 to A.
Still, the festive beats in the background make up for it and have you swinging and dancing along. It’s funky and a little quirky, but also kind of cool.
The golden crown is the most valuable symbol in the game, paying 20x our stake for a 6-of-a-kind win. The red-headed lady pays out 7.5x our stake for such a win and the orange-masked guy pays out 2.5x our stake. All other symbols pay out less than that, but never less than 1x our stake for a win with 6 on a payline.
You can play this game from 0.10 to 100.00.
Avalanche reels and multipliers in the base game
In this game you get Avalanche reels, or cascading wins, however you wish to call them. It means that all winning combinations explode off the reels and more symbols are falling from above to hopefully create more wins. And with every cascading win the multiplier at the bottom of the reels increases by 1x. It can go up indefinitely as long as you keep winning. It will reset on a losing spin, of course.
And that’s about it for the base game. Surprisingly, it is enough, because it will have to keep you going for a very long time.
Exploding wilds and locked multipliers in the free spins
As it is, we played at least 500 spins if not more before we hit the free spins for the first time. You need at least three bonus symbols (the Carnival Queen herself) to activate the free spins. You will start with 12 free spins when you have 3 scatters. Each additional scatter (up to 6, of course) will add another 4 spins to your starting spins.
During the free spins more bonus scatters mean more free spins. You need two scatters to add 3 more spins. And any additional scatter beyond that will add 3 more spins, meaning you can get up to 15 extra spins should you get 6 scatters. In fact, unlimited free spins are possible if you keep getting more scatters.
As an added feature, the multiplier continues to increase on every winning round. But it will stay locked on that multiplier and no reset on the next losing spin. You’ll often climb at least to 6x but more is possible, especially if you keep collecting more free spins.
Finally, on any non-winning spin where a Wild is on the reels, that Wild will explode and destroy all symbols in its path horizontally and vertically. This makes room for another cascade and could result in winning combination. It might not, however.
Conclusion: Incredibly frustrating slot that will take its time to become awesome
The theoretical RTP (Return to Player) for Carnival Queen is 96.1%. That’s only an average value and considering that this slot is definitely volatile (although not as volatile as other games we’ve played recently), you will have to hold onto your budget.
And, boy, does this game frustrate. We played at least 45 minutes before we hit the free spins the first time. The second time we hit it was only a few minutes after that and we almost couldn’t believe it. The incredible thing, however, was that during an hour of play, we didn’t incur great losses and enough big wins to not feel like complete losers. Get this: we played 1 hour at €1 per spin and the game eventually informed us that we’d lost €29.40, asking whether we wanted to continue. Of course, we’d lost a lot more than that during that hour, but we also won enough to keep our game up and going. That’s pretty good considering how long it took to hit the free spins for the first time. Plus, the game is fun and engaging. As long as you manage your budget, you’ll have fun too.