Contact (Play’n GO): Review

It’s already been a packed year for Aztec-themed releases – Temple Treasure Megaways (Blueprint Gaming), Temple Tumble Megaways (Relax Gaming), Phoenix Reborn (Play’n GO) and the more recently launched Ecuador Gold (ELK Studios) all explore similar territory. Many would say the wave truly kicked off with NetEnt’s blockbuster Gonzo’s Quest, a title so influential that tumbling reels practically became tied to the Aztec setting.

We first heard about Contact at the London iGaming conference, where Play’n GO presented the slot. At the time we hadn’t been able to try it ourselves and we didn’t have a game sheet either, so the variance and overall potential were a mystery. That’s no longer the case.

Contact runs on a 5×7 grid and uses cluster mechanics, meaning you need a cluster of 5 identical symbols to form a win. Unlike many other cluster games, wins aren’t removed here. Instead, winning symbols drop down and lock in place, while non-winning symbols disappear and new ones cascade in to refill the grid. On top of that, Contact features win multipliers up to 30x and two kinds of Bonus Rounds with reel modifiers. It’s available on all devices with stakes ranging from 0.20 to 100 Eur per spin.

Visually, it’s fairly familiar and largely in line with what you’d expect from an Aztec slot, though the towering reel setup is undeniably striking. The soundtrack is a highlight too, delivering a forceful indigenous score with an epic feel. Framed by two flaming skulls and placed inside a temple, the 5×7 grid is filled with Aztec-style stone-carved icons like turtles, snakes, birds, monkeys and jaguars. Far more valuable are the 4 Aztec face masks, with the purple mask as the top payer, awarding 7.5 times your stake for 5 across a payline.

Contact (Play’n GO): Features

The base game isn’t especially feature-heavy, but multipliers can meaningfully lift returns if you cover the entire 2nd, 4th, or 6th row with a winning combination – doing so applies a total win multiplier of x2, x3 or x4 respectively.

Contact doesn’t use a classic scatter symbol. Instead, the Bonus Round triggers when winning symbols extend all the way to the top. It begins with 3 free spins and works like a streak spins feature: winning clusters stay on the grid for the duration of the bonus and continue to expand as matching symbols connect to them. During this mode, completing rows 2, 3, 5 or 6 with winning symbols increases your payout by x2, x3, x4 or x5 respectively. Completing rows 1, 4 or 7 instead grants one of these 3 modifiers:

• Block Destroyer: 1 of the multiplier blocks to the left of the grid is destroyed, allowing the remaining multiplier blocks to cascade down, potentially allowing for additional increasing multiplier blocks to fall into place.
• Symbol Upgrade: 1 of the winning clusters receives a symbol upgrade to the next best symbol.
• Extra Free Spins: 1 additional free spin is awarded.

If you manage to cover the entire grid with winning symbols in the base game, you’ll trigger the more rewarding Super Bonus Round. This starts with 6 free spins, and by filling ANY row with winning clusters you’ll receive both a total win multiplier AND a modifier, with the modifiers themselves being notably stronger:

• Block Destroyer: 3 of the multiplier blocks to the left of the grid is destroyed, allowing the remaining multiplier blocks to cascade down, potentially allowing for additional increasing multiplier blocks to fall into place.
• Symbol Upgrade: all of the winning clusters receives a symbol upgrade to the next best symbol.
• Extra Free Spins: 3 additional free spin is awarded.

Thanks to the Block Destroyer modifier, payouts can be increased by as much as 30x. Even so, the maximum win available in the bonus is 1517.5 times your stake overall.

Contact (Play’n GO): Verdict

We went in with the somewhat naive belief that the flashy international casinos exhibition in London is where studios heavily promote their biggest upcoming releases, so we mistakenly expected Contact to be a kind of game changer that, without sacrificing any of the oppressive tension, would push the grid-slot concept into broader, sandbox-like territory.

Sadly, Contact’s purpose feels like it vanished somewhere in the thick Central American jungle and, with limited potential, a fairly dull base game and features that come across as routine, there isn’t much reason to return. Play’n GO have delivered some outstanding grid slots, but this isn’t among their finest efforts.