Get in the party spirit with Samba Carnival, inspired by Rio’s famous annual festival! This 5-reel slot was released in January 2016 by Play’n GO, and we’ll take a close look at its gameplay, bonuses, and other key details in our Samba Carnival review. Play for cash prizes of up to 2,300x your stake and land multiplier Wilds to boost the value of winning combinations by up to x5. Trigger the Bonus Game to pick a symbol and reveal a prize, and use the optional Gamble feature to increase the size of any base-game win by up to x4!
Samba Carnival features 5 reels, 3 rows, and your choice of between 1 and 15 paylines. In the base game, you can change the number of active lines between spins just as easily as adjusting your stake. Bets range from £0.01 to £18.75 depending on how many active paylines there are.
To build winning combinations, land three, four, or five matching symbols on any active payline. The fruit symbols pay the lowest prizes, while the three dancers offer the bigger payouts.
The theoretical Return to Player (RTP) is lower than average at just 96.78%, and the volatility is in the medium range. That means payout size and frequency are both moderate — you can win up to 2,300x your bet if you match 5 Pink Dancer symbols. There are much bigger prizes available in countless other slot games, but this is far from the lowest max win we’ve seen.
There are lots of different online casinos where you can play Samba Carnival? Here’s our list of the best online slot sites hosting the game right now.
The Rio Carnival is a major event each year, featuring amazing outfits, dancing, and music. Samba Carnival is inspired by this festival, and it stars beautiful female dancers dressed in stunning costumes. However, considering that the Rio Carnival is so big and dynamic, the graphics do feel a little bit flat, even though they’re packed with colour.
Samba Carnival’s audio captures the festival atmosphere, though, with energetic music, chatter, and whistles. Music carries over into some of the symbols, with drums and maracas landing across the reels. There are seven standard symbols, including three dancers and four fruits, as well as Wilds and Bonus symbols.
The Pink Dancer symbol is the most valuable: get 5 to win 2,300x your bet. The lime is the lowest-paying symbol, with a top payout of 73x your stake.
Lime
3 — 3x bet / 4 — 13x bet / 5 — 73x bet
Orange
3 — 4x bet / 4 — 20x bet / 5 — 100x bet
Watermelon
3 — 3x bet/ 4 — 23x bet / 5 — 123x bet
Pineapple
3 — 10x bet / 4 — 30x bet / 5 — 230x bet
Green Dancer
3 — 20x bet / 4 — 100x bet / 5 — 300x bet
Blue Dancer
3 — 50x bet / 4 — 130x bet / 5 — 1,000x bet
Pink Dancer
3 — 30x bet / 4 — 230x bet / 5 — 2,300x bet
Samba Carnival is a HTML5 slot, so it’s compatible with mobile and desktop devices. The presentation is the same on mobile, but you can switch between portrait and landscape mode easily. The Spin button’s position changes depending on which mode you use, so Samba Carnival is always convenient to play on a small screen.
You won’t find a huge range of bonus features in Samba Carnival: just a Bonus Game and a Gamble round. However, there are Wild symbols with variable multipliers to help you boost the size of your wins, too.
There are four Wild symbols in Samba Carnival, all featuring maracas. Each Wild has a multiplier value: 2x, 3x, 4x, and 5x. These substitute for every paying symbol (not the Bonus symbol), and they multiply any win they help create by their respective value (e.g. x4).
Match three Bonus symbols to trigger the Bonus Game.
When the Bonus Game starts, choose one of the triggering Bonus symbols to reveal a prize of up to 150x your bet.
The Gamble feature is optional. You can play this after any winning spin in the base game for a chance to double or quadruple a prize.
If you choose to play the Gamble round, you need to try to guess the colour or suit of a face-down playing card. You can pick red or black to potentially double your prize, or click on any of the four suits to possibly quadruple your win instead.
If you get the colour or suit right, you can keep playing to increase your winnings again or go back to the base game. But get either wrong and the feature will end, and you’ll lose the triggering win altogether.
Samba Carnival is a quick and simple slot. It’s not quite as dynamic as it could be given that it’s based on one of the biggest carnivals in the world, but it’s still fairly eye-catching in its design. The biggest payout available is 2,300x your bet, which is less than you can play for in any number of other slots (including numerous released by Play’n GO). The RTP is below average at 95.78%, too, which is also lower than in plenty of other games.
Fortunately, Samba Carnival has multiplier Wilds to potentially multiply your wins by up to x5, and its Bonus Game is a short-but-sweet pick-and-click feature. All in all, Samba Carnival is playable enough, but nothing about it particularly stands out.
Rating: 6.0
Here are five popular questions people ask about Samba Carnival: