Day of Dead Slot Review 2021

Look alive, the dead are among us and they’re here to celebrate in Day of Dead by Pragmatic Play

If there’s a few things in the iGaming world that you can count on, it’s Wild West themes, Greek Themes and Egyptian Themes. The Day of Dead may not be as oversaturated as these ones, but we’ve still seen a fair few titles from providers with their take on the ‘Día de los Muertos’ holiday.

Day of Dead doesn’t exactly stand out, so there’s no real positive first impression, but can it make up for it in terms of gameplay? Let’s find out.

Day of Dead Slot Base Game

Day of Dead Theme

The Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday held on the 1st and 2nd of November, and is associated with the Catholic celebrations of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. The Day of the Dead is a day of celebration rather than mourning, where family and friends will come together and pray for those who have died.

The backdrop in Day of Dead is set in a dark graveyard where we find ourselves surrounded by fog and dimly lit candles, the backdrop gives off a creepy vibe to it which makes us feel like we wont be doing much celebrating here. The backdrop in our opinion is more doom and gloom than it is reviving.

The Mexican style music playing throughout is a little more cheery and upbeat, although we can’t seem to shake off the spooky vibe its got going on. The sound effects in Day of Dead are really good and fit well in terms of the overall theme.

Day of Dead Betting and Symbols

Day of Dead has a variety of betting options for players to choose from. For those who prefer a lower stake, the minimum bet available is £0.20 per spin. For players who prefer a higher stake, the maximum bet available is £100 per spin with plenty of other options in between the two.

The highest paying symbols in Day of Dead is the Man and the Woman with green and blue borders, and following on from them is the Old Lady and the Dog with the Orange and Pink borders. Medium paying symbols are the Guitar, the Drum and Maracas. Lower paying symbols are the standard Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts and Spades.

Wild symbols substitute for all symbols except Expanding Wilds and Scatters.

Game Provider Pragmatic Play
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Minimum Bet 0.2
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Maximum Bet 100
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Maximum Win 4,500x
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Paylines 20
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Release Date 21/10/2021
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RTP 96.49%
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Mechanics video slot
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Volatility Low
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Reels 5
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Day of Dead Base Game and Features

Day of Dead is a 5 reel slot with 20 fixed paylines. To form a win you will need to connect 3 or more of the same symbols from left to right, starting from the left-most reel.

The base game alone may seem a little dull in comparison to the theme but Day of Dead is just warming up, the celebrations start now as we unearth the Walking Wilds Feature.

Walking Wilds Feature

During the base game in Day of Dead you may stumble across an expanding wild, these wilds expand to fill the whole reel.

Winning combinations are paid and a Respin is awarded, these wilds walk one reel towards the left edge until it walks off the screen.

More expanding wilds can hit during Respins and will adopt the same behaviour. Respins will continue until there are no Walking Wilds left on the screen.

Day of Dead Free Spins

Day of Dead gives players the chance to win Free Spins and to do this you will need to land 3 Scatters on reels 1, 3 and 5. Once Free Spins are triggered you will be awarded a free Respin.

During the free Respin, Day of Dead will continue to Respin as long as there are Walking Wilds on the reels. Although Free Spins is similar to the Walking Wilds Feature, Free Spins has a collectable Wild symbol in the form of a Tombstone which only appears during Free Spins.

Collected Wild symbols will gather at the top of the game and will stay there until they go onto the reels as expanded Walking Wilds. At the start of Free Spins you will be awarded 2 collected Wild symbols, when the Respins start one or possibly both of these collected wild symbols will be added to random reels, becoming expanded Walking Wilds.

With every Respin more and more collectable wild symbols can land and be collected, then added to the reels at any point as expanded Walking Wilds during Free Spins.

Free Spins will end when there are no more expanding Walking Wilds on the reels and all collected wild symbols have run out. If the max win of 4,500x is reached during Free Spins, the round will immediately ends, the max win is awarded and any remaining Repsins are forfeited.

Day of Dead Respins 1

Day of Dead Bonus Buy

For those outside the UK can benefit from a Bonus Buy Option. This can be purchased for 100x your bet.

The RTP when buying Free Spins differs slightly from that of the main game as it increases ever so slightly from 96.49% to 96.50%.

Day of Dead Our Verdict

We’ve seen our fair share of ‘Day of the Dead’ themes before, so the concept of it doesn’t really inspire much excitement.

Day of Dead just feels a little bit rushed, and this is a common thing that we’ve come to notice from Pragmatic Play titles of late. Win potential never really seems to differ from game to game, and Day of Dead actually has a slightly lower win potential of 4,500x compared to the common 5,000x figure we usually see from the provider.

At this stage, we’re wondering if Pragmatic Play really do have a very large team, or if they’re just rushing out releases. Its hard to think of another who releases slot titles so frequently, and to some it may seem like a good thing. To us, it just seems like they’re neglecting to properly nurture their ideas in favour of as many releases as possible.

With some providers, you wait in anticipation for their next release to come, because you know it’s likely to be an exciting new prospect. With Pragmatic Play, it’s just another day. Perhaps we’re being too harsh, Pragmatic Play do after all have some knock out titles in their portfolio. This is what we’d love to see them do again, because Day of Dead certainly isn’t it.

We’re not saying Day of Dead is bad, its just not that exciting. It has ample win potential, and through testing it ourselves the bonus buy often yielded some good results. But is it a stand out game? not at all.

Overall, we think Day of Dead will fade into irrelevance rather quicky, and when it does there may well be another 10 or 20 rather lazy Pragmatic titles out already.