John Hunter and the Mayan Gods Slot Review

Basic Information for John Hunter and the Mayan Gods

John Hunter and the Mayan Gods is a Pragmatic Play slot released on 27.11.2020, and it is the fourth outing for the adventurous explorer. The action takes place in dense Mayan forests on a 5x3 layout with ten fixed paylines, paying from left to right. The base game is as straightforward as they come, with regular line wins and the occasional expanded wild, and the whole concept already feels a bit tired.

I usually play John Hunter and the Mayan Gods with stakes between 10p and £2, but the slot accepts anything from 10p to £100 per spin. You can run up to 1,000 autospins, turn on turbo mode, and let the high volatility engine grind away. Under the jungle wrapping it is a simple ten-line slot riding heavily on the John Hunter brand rather than on fresh mechanics.

John Hunter and the Mayan Gods Stats: Real RTP, Volatility & Max Win

In John Hunter and the Mayan Gods the theoretical RTP usually sits around 96.46 percent, which lines up quite well with long-term stats from millions of recorded spins showing about 96.67 percent returned. The volatility is high, with a measured value of 100.55 and a hit rate close to 12.35 percent, so most spins miss. On average, I trigger the bonus roughly once every 120 spins.

The game advertises a maximum win of 2,500 times your stake, yet the paytable itself tops out at 500 times for a full screen of John Hunter symbols. That means you would need to cap the free spins round several times in a row to see the theoretical limit. Actual recorded wins have peaked at just over 1,260 times stake, so the maths model feels quite conservative for such fierce swings.

John Hunter and the Mayan Gods Features

In terms of features, John Hunter and the Mayan Gods keeps things fairly basic. The gold mask acts as the wild, landing only on the three middle reels and substituting for all regular symbols. When it helps form a win, it can expand to cover the whole reel. Temple scatters pay instant prizes of 2, 20 or 50 times your bet for three, four or five and trigger the free spins.

Bonus Features of the John Hunter and the Mayan Gods Slot

During the bonus features in John Hunter and the Mayan Gods, the wild symbols take centre stage. In the free spins round the gold masks always land fully expanded on reels two, three and four, instantly filling any reel they hit. Just as in the base game they still substitute, yet here they also act as progress triggers, feeding into both the extra spin mechanism and the premium symbol upgrade ladder.

Each spin where one or more wilds land does two jobs. One, you receive extra free spins, with one mask giving one spin, two granting three, and three masks awarding five. Two, those same wilds upgrade the premium picture symbols, starting with the lowest one, the goblet, and moving step by step through six levels until all higher-paying symbols have morphed into the top John Hunter icon.

The symbol upgrade effect in John Hunter and the Mayan Gods can snowball hard once you climb towards level six. At that point only John Hunter, low-value royal symbols and the expanding wild masks appear, so any line of premiums pays at the top rate. A full screen of John Hunter is worth 500 times your bet. Free spins can be retriggered with three or more scatters, and there is no fixed cap.

John Hunter and the Mayan Gods Symbols and Paytable

In John Hunter and the Mayan Gods the premium symbols do most of the heavy lifting. A full line of the explorer himself pays 50 times your stake, dropping to 25 times for four of a kind and 10 times for three. The next picture symbol pays 40, 20 and 5 times your bet, followed by others worth 30, 12.5 and 2, then 25, 10 and 2, and two symbols paying 20, 5 and 1.

Below the thematic icons sit the card royals, which are the low-paying symbols in John Hunter and the Mayan Gods. They all share the same paytable, awarding 10 times your stake for five of a kind, 2 times for four and 0.5 times for three. Wild masks and temple scatters do not have line wins, and the upgrade feature only affects premium symbols, so royals remain at their modest levels.

Symbols and Paytable

Symbol	Quantity	Payout
	5	x50
	4	x25
	3	x10
	5	x40
	4	x20
	3	x5
	5	x30
	4	x12.5
	3	x2
	5	x25
	4	x10
	3	x2
	5	x20
	4	x5
	3	x1
	5	x20
	4	x5
	3	x1
	5	x10
	4	x2
	3	x0.5
	5	x10
	4	x2
	3	x0.5
	5	x10
	4	x2
	3	x0.5
	5	x10
	4	x2
	3	x0.5
	Wild
	Scatter

The 200 Spins John Hunter and the Mayan Gods Experience

I put John Hunter and the Mayan Gods through a standard 200-spin test session, and the base game really felt like a grind. Apart from the odd expanded wild giving a small line hit, almost nothing of note happened until the scatters finally landed together. Once the bonus kicked in, though, the slot came alive, upgrades rolled in, and I managed to reach level six for some respectable, if not massive, payouts.

Review Summary of John Hunter and the Mayan Gods

From my perspective, John Hunter and the Mayan Gods is a solid but familiar entry in the series. The symbol upgrade bonus round has been seen many times before, yet it still creates an engaging rhythm once the wild masks start dropping. Filling the screen with John Hunter during upgraded free spins feels exciting, and the expanding wilds in both phases of play give the slot a clear, easy-to-follow highlight.

On the downside, the combination of brutal volatility and a 500 times single-spin cap makes John Hunter and the Mayan Gods feel underpowered compared with many newer high-variance titles. The stated 2,500 times maximum relies on hitting that cap repeatedly in one bonus, which looks very optimistic. RTP around 96.5 percent is fine, but for me the maths profile does not quite justify the long dry spells the slot often produces.

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