Carnival Queen slot review (Thunderkick)

Thunderkick is not known as one of the most prolific casino game developers, but certainly as one of the best

Even these mad hatter Swedish slots designers follow the trend to mainly release online slots with a sky-high variance.

Carnival Queen brings you into a sultry, festive Samba environment that can also make you incredibly rich.

The maximum payout in Carnival Queen is a stunning 22,700 x the total bet. We kid you not.

Imagine that you could attain this with an active maximum bet, and we would be talking here about a very tidy of $€ 2,270,000.

Carnival Queen has more on offer than the humongous potential. It also has colourful graphics, twerking dancers and a mysterious voodoo priestess.

If that doesn’t arouse your interest…nothing will.

How does Carnival Queen work?

Carnival Queen is situated in the Big Easy: the city of New Orleans. The annual carnival is in full swing, with throngs of people, fireworks and music.

This is a slot without fixed paylines but with the win always mechanism. There are 6 reels with 4 rows of symbols, creating 4,096 ways to win.

You always play with a fixed amount per spin, which starts as low as $€ 0.10 and can go up all the way to € 100 per spin.

The avalanche feature is active: winning combinations disappear after which new symbols drop down. After each winning spin, the multiplier is increased by +1. Only when the series is interrupted by a non-winning spin will the multiplier go back down to 1, the starting value.

Variance and payout rate

The variance is high, and the theoretical payout rate is 96.1%. That is not super high, but certainly not a bad rate.

Symbols and payouts

The wild symbol replaces all other symbols except for the scatters. The wild symbol can be found on all reels.

Regular symbols can appear as (small) stacks, wilds only as singles.

The highest paying regular symbol is the golden crown. This symbol is the only one to give a price with 2 consecutive same symbols, from left to right. Spin 6 crowns, and you get a nice payout: 20 x the total bet.

The characters with a mask are the premium symbols. Spin the same 6 for prizes that vary between 2 x and 7.5 x the total bet.

Finally, we come to the lowest paying symbols: the card symbols. Spin 6 x a 9, 10, J, Q, K or A for a payout between 1 x and 1.7 x the total bet.

Of course, all prices are multiplied with the current active multiplier.

Free spin bonus

Three or more scattered voodoo priestesses will give you a minimum of 12 and a maximum of 24 free spins.

During the free spins, a multiplier is active again, but it will never reset during the bonus feature. It can thus only increase, never decrease.

If you are capable of putting down a long series of winning spins, possibly combined with a minimum of 2 scatters (for +3 free spins), your play can be rewarded by some very nice amounts of prize money.

Extra wild feature

If, during the free spins, a wild symbol appears on any of the reels, and there is NO winning combination, then all horizontal and vertical symbols that cross the wild will be removed. The multiplier will also be increased by +1.

New symbols will fall into those spots, leading to a winning combination this time around – a kind of second chance feature.

Our verdict on the Carnival Queen slot

It may take some time before you win the bonus feature on Carnival Queen, but when it happens, you better strap yourself in and brace yourself.

This slot can pay out huge amounts during the free spins, thanks to the avalanche symbols, the unlimited multipliers and the frequent retriggers.

Carnival Queen is a real beauty, from the nicely shaped symbols through the stunning animations and the exquisite details. Take a close look at the partygoers’ faces on the reels when you win the bonus feature.

Suddenly it appears there are very different figures hiding in the characters.

This Thunderkick slot will perform very well, mark our words.

4 out of 5 stars.

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