Heart of Rio Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Heart of Rio Review

The carnival of Rio is a legendary event that most people would want to participate in at least once in their lifetime, and it’s surely on this reviewer’s bucket list. The festive theme has inspired many slots over the years, and Heart of Rio doesn’t really stick out all that much from the herd. It doesn’t help that it’s a reskin of El Dorado The City of Gold either, and the biggest difference is the hair accessories, make-up and all-female character symbols.

In these days of “social distancing”, this game might be the closest you’ll ever get to the real thing, and it can certainly help you dream of better times. The base game is all about collecting money symbols with 5 different modifier collectors, and you can build up a massive money collect mega symbol during the bonus round. If you’re looking for a bit of samba and high energy during the lockdown, Heart of Rio might be enough of an excuse to shake loose.

Heart of Rio slot Features

The lady with red hair-ornaments is the wild symbol, and she steps in for all regular pay symbols to help you form winning combinations. She can land on reels 2, 3, 4 or 5 only, and the wild does not hold any value of its own.

Disco ball cash symbols land on reels 1 to 4, and these come with random cash prizes attached. If you land 1 of the 5 collect symbols on reel 5 at the same time, one of the following alternatives play out:

• Collect – all the money symbol values are added together and paid.
• Extra credit collect – the extra credit value is added to all money symbols before they are collected.
• Multiplier collect – all money symbols are subject to the given multiplier before being collected.
• Expanding collect – all money symbols spread to cover their full respective reels, and then the total is summed up and paid.
• Respin collect – all money symbols become sticky, and the remaining positions respin.

  

  All money symbols are then summed up and paid after the respin.

You need to land 3 bongo drum scatters on reels 2 to 4 to trigger the Bonus Round, and this awards 8 free spins. You get an initial scatter win of 1x up front, and the bonus round comes with 1 additional rule regarding the money collect feature. All money symbols that land are now collected in a Bonus Cash Pot, and the total value returns as a mega money symbol on the final respin.

The mega money symbol fills reel 1 to 4, and reel 5 respins. If you land a collect symbol on reel 5 you win the whole bonus pot. You can retrigger the bonus round with +8 new free spins, and this happens if you land 3 new scatters during the feature.

The 200 Spins Heart of Rio slot Experience

Nothing overly exciting happened for us in the base game, although we landed a couple of smaller wins. The bonus round is triggered at 1:33 into the 3-minute highlights video, and you can see for yourself how we fared by hitting the play button.

Review Summary

Being a reskin of Pragmatic’s own El Dorado The City of Gold, Heart of Rio can hardly claim to be an original game. The Hold & Win feature is a bit unusual though, as you don’t get respins like you normally do. Instead, you have the 5 different collect modifiers, and only 1 of them allows for more money symbols to potentially land from a respin.

This all changes in the bonus round, where you might build up a decent bonus pot. It’s far from easy to land the necessary collect symbol on the final respin however, and it’s really frustrating when it doesn’t appear. The 10,500x potential seems a bit far fetched, not least since the single spin max win is only 800x your stake. We thought Pragmatic was done with exaggerated potentials, but perhaps that doesn’t apply to reskin jobs.

Pros

• Cash symbols w/ 5 collect modifiers
• Bonus round w/ bonus pot collect
• Win up to 10,500x your stake

Cons

• Single spin max win is only 800x

If you love/enjoy/appreciate Heart of Rio slot you should also try:

El Dorado The City of Gold - is pretty much the same game, but with a different theme. It’s all about the money collect feature with 5 different collect modifiers, and you can build up a bonus cash pot with the money symbols during the bonus round.

Rio Stars - is a feature rich carnival slot from Red Tiger, and it comes with 4 drum modifiers in the base game.

Carnival Queen - is a solid festive slot from Thunderkick, and it comes with a cascading wins multiplier in the base game. The multiplier does not reset in the bonus round, and this can lead to payouts up to 22,700x your stake.

Related Slots