John Hunter and the Aztec Treasure (Pragmatic Play): Overview

Much like in music or video games, slot studios often borrow ideas from one another, which can lead to genuinely fresh results. But with the market getting more and more packed, the boundary between taking inspiration and outright copying has become increasingly blurry. Clones are nothing new, either—there’s a long track record of this kind of cheeky practice in iGaming, and it’s difficult to name a studio that doesn’t have at least one clone, or near-clone, in its catalogue.

Given how massively popular the Megaways engine has become, it was only a matter of time before Big Time Gaming had to deal with copycats. Up until mid-2019, rival providers that wanted to give players the Megaways experience generally did so by licensing it from Big Time Gaming. But after releasing the Bonanza lookalike Perfect Gems and seemingly facing no consequences, Play’n GO may have set a precedent and encouraged other less careful studios to do the same. Today’s review is a clear example.

This 5-reel Pragmatic Play title brings back Rich Wilde lookalike John Hunter for another expedition, this time hunting Aztec riches. Originally called “Book of Mystery“, it was later renamed to John Hunter and the Aztec Treasure for reasons we don’t know. In practice, it combines the Megaways-style engine with William Interactive’s well-known Montezuma slot. Playable on all devices from 20 cents to 100€/$ per spin, each reel can randomly show between 2 and 6 symbols, creating up to 7,776 ways to win at maximum expansion. In John Hunter and the Aztec Treasure, the main focus is the free spins round, where a multiplier of up to 10x can significantly increase payouts.

On the visual side, it doesn’t do much to separate itself from the many Aztec-themed slots already out there. The setting is a Mesoamerican jungle with the familiar temple backdrop, plus a pair of stone torches framing the reels. The presentation isn’t bad, but it carries that familiar, somewhat generic Pragmatic look. Symbols include low-paying A, K, Q and J royals, along with torches, hats and bullwhips, toucans, snakes, and panthers. John Hunter is the headline symbol and pays the most, awarding 4 times your stake for 5 across a full payline. The golden totem mask acts as the wild and appears as stacks on the three middle reels only.

John Hunter and the Aztec Treasure (Pragmatic Play): Features

An earlier build of the slot used a book scatter, but this was later replaced by the Aztec shield seen in the released version. Hit 3 of them to activate the Free Spins feature, where a bonus wheel determines how many free spins you get—landing 3, 4 or 5 scatters awards between 5-25, 10-25, and 15-25 free spins respectively.

During the feature, each spin receives a randomly chosen multiplier of 2x, 3x, 5x, 7x, or 10x, similar to Montezuma and Play’n Go:s clone Legacy of Egypt. In addition, seeing 2 or more scatters will grant extra free spins, again decided by the wheel. The multiplier that was active at the moment the bonus re-triggered will then carry over and apply to all of the awarded extra spins. After those extra spins are completed, the multiplier becomes unlocked once more and the feature returns to its standard behaviour for the remaining free spins.

John Hunter and the Aztec Treasure (Pragmatic Play): Verdict

As mentioned earlier, John Hunter and the Aztec Treasure uses Pragmatic’s take on the Megaways-style engine and blends it with Montezuma. There isn’t much subtlety here, and Pragmatic doesn’t really try to present it as anything different. As is often the case with this studio, the bonus features can be fairly difficult to trigger and the overall experience can feel punishing.

After playing roughly 20-30 bonuses, we could hardly manage to hit a 100x win. That’s obviously a very limited sample size, but it still left us with the sense that something feels slightly “off” in the maths. For a slot capable of offering over 7000 ways to win, it seems to struggle surprisingly often to line up matching symbols. Also, unlike Megaways slots, it doesn’t display the total number of win ways on each spin—but that’s not a major loss, since the gameplay itself feels rather flat. While the 9000x potential makes it worth a test run, John Hunter and the Aztec Treasure ultimately doesn’t match the quality of the titles it tries to ride on.