Fire Blaze: Fiesta Mistica Slot by Playtech

A neon Día de los Muertos night: fairy lights strung over adobe pueblo domes, cacti and marigolds, all soaked in saturated pink, purple, teal and gold. The paying symbols are glowing Alebrije spirit animals, a winged Xolo dog, a peacock-tailed bird, a flowered gecko, sitting above electric-bright A-K-Q-J-10 royals. But the symbol that runs the whole game is the Flaming Flower coin. Each one lands carrying a cash value worth 1x up to 50x your total bet, or a Jackpot Star instead of a number.

Land six or more of those coins on a single spin and the Fire Blaze Respin round locks them in place, values and all. You get three respins, and every position that isn't a coin keeps spinning on its own. Each new Flaming Flower that drops sticks and resets the counter back to three. Fill all fifteen positions and the Grand lands, worth 2,000x the total bet, the top prize on offer. A held Jackpot Star pays out too, turning into the Major, Minor or Mini (500x, 100x or 20x), and more than one can drop in a single feature. When the respins run dry, every coin value on screen is paid at once.

The Catrina Wild is a rose-crowned sugar-skull lady who shows up only on reels 2 to 5 and stands in for everything except the heart Scatter and the coins. That red love-heart Scatter, stamped with a "Caliente C", pays on its own (1x, 10x or 50x the bet for three, four or five) and three or more open six free games. Here's where the wild earns its keep. During the free games, any Catrina landing on the middle reel carries a multiplier of x2, x4, x8 or x16 on every win it completes, and the Flaming Flowers on that reel run hotter too, worth 5x, 10x, 15x or 50x. Six spins is short, though, and retriggers are the only way to stretch it.

No buy button and no ante, so the coins have to arrive on their own. That leaves the base game a bit of a waiting room, pretty as it is, until enough Flaming Flowers turn up at once to set the respins going.