Maradona El Diez! Slot Review

09/12/2024 | Categories: Blueprint Gaming Slots | Published by: Joe | Last updated: 09/12/2024

We recently reviewed Blueprint Gaming’s Napoleon Megaways, one of this provider’s four slots that came out in October 2024. While browsing this company’s catalog and recent releases for our Napoleon Megaways scan, we saw that Blueprint had a new Maradona game. Over the past two years, this famed studio has unleashed two other titles featuring this legendary football player, similar to this one. The first one is D10S Maradona, which debuted in November 2022, and Maradona El Pibe De Oro, which appeared online in September 2023.

Maradona El Diez is the latest Maradona spinner by Blueprint, which allegedly became available on November 1st. That is what we have read and what other sites list as its release date. However, we could not find this game on several platforms we checked, and we saw some news hubs mention that it will be on hand for gaming fun in late December. So, we are uncertain if this title is currently active at distinct crypto casinos and if it will later get mass distribution. We are reviewing the demo version of this slot because we were asked to and because we are massive fans of Maradona.

Design & Theme

For decades, the question of who the best football player of all time was a two-man debate, with pundits and fans arguing over whether Pele or Maradona should receive this honor. Accolade-wise, Pele may have been the more deserving one of it. However, Diego Maradona charmed his way into many footie lovers’ hearts through his blend of unparalleled charisma, ability, and off-the-field controversies. Maradona was a master dribbler with amazing vision and creativity. Today, Messi may have taken over Maradona’s title as Argentina’s best footballer ever, but even on this, some people will fight you tooth and nail because Diego was more than just a player; he was a cultural phenomenon, the embodiment of a rags-to-riches story that has resonated with most in his native country.

Maradona enjoyed an illustrious career in Boca Juniors, Barcelona, and, most notably, Napoli. Unfortunately, the tail end of his career got marred by cocaine scandals. Aside from Blueprint, which is one of the game providers in the interactive gaming sphere most willing to pay likeness licenses, GameArt is the other online gambling supplier that has Maradona-themed slots. These are Diego Maradona Champione and Maradona Hyperways.

The presentation of this one is quite basic, with a mural serving as the backdrop, over which a relatively usual grid gets overlayed featuring run-of-the-mill jerseys, balls, Maradona, and royal symbols. You get some nice music here that is very likely to inspire some rhythmic shoulder and hip movements from you during your sessions. But, it gets over-dominated by game show-style audio effects, which are a bit too loud. The animations in this game are also pretty straightforward, and they help the game not be as flat as the graphics make it feel but do not sizably enhance its presentation.

Specs & Gameplay

The gameplay here transpires over a five-reel, three-row grid with ten paylines. The variance level in play is medium-high, and the RTP stands at a straight 95%, a surprisingly rounded and somewhat low setting. The max win here is x50,000, capped out at $250,000 for a single spin. The betting range of Blueprint Gaming‘s Maradona El Diez! begins at $0.10, ending at $100. You have seventeen wager sizes to choose from in this game, for which we cannot tell you the hit frequency as we did not see it listed anywhere.

Winning combinations in Maradona El Diez! get formed by you landing three to five identical tokens on one of this game’s ten paylines. All wins here pay from left to right, with only the highest one getting paid out. The low-pay symbols of this Blueprint creation are A, K, Q, and J royals, which pay x5 or x7.5 for five-of-a-kind combos. Their high-pay counterparts are four jerseys that Maradona has worn during his illustrious career. Three are club ones, and we already mentioned the teams above, Boca Juniors, Barcelona, and Napoli, while the fourth one is Argentina’s national kit, which is the highest-pay token of this lot, producing rewards of x100 for five Argentina jerseys hitting on a spin. Five Boca Juniors and Barcelona ones generate wins of x10 for five of these landing in view, and the Napoli kit yields x20 wins for five.

The word Wild on an Argentinian flag is the substitution token of Maradona El Diez!, and it shows up on all the reels except the first one. Maradona himself is the scatter here, appearing as an expanding collect symbol.

Bonus Features

We mentioned an expanding collect symbol above. So, what is all that about? You have golden balls in this game, which appear on the first four reels on every spin, with the collect one active on the fifth. If that one lands, he gathers the values on all in-view cash ball tokens, activating the collect features, which, after paying out the accumulated values and paying out your reward, unlocks a new collect symbol that remains active.

Scatters can only hit on the middle three reels in Maradona El Diez!, and they activate the free spin bonus, where unlocked collect tokens remain active. The complementary gaming opportunities get awarded in this round, and achieving enough collect tokens in this mode grants you more on-the-house spins and collect multipliers.

Please note that you can trigger one of four modifiers on any spin in this reel-spinning product. These are bonus boost, wild add, cash add, and lose to win.

GOSU Verdict

Fans of Maradona may like this game for a while. We doubt that even hardcore Maradona fanatics will play this slot for years to come. The collect mechanic is decent, and we did not expect it and the modifiers to keep us as engaged as they did because we kind of dismissed this game almost instantly after getting a taste of its static presentation. Nevertheless, it was not as bad as we thought it would be. Its gameplay is nothing special, but it is Okay. Still, we think Blueprint Gaming’s design team could have put more effort into the look of this, and their other Maradona releases, as they are all pretty uninspiring, audio-visually, in our opinion.