Coba Reborn Slot (Elk Studios) Slot Demo & Review

It’s not often that I come across a word that I don’t recognise, but I always love learning new things! Thank you then, ELK Studios, for teaching me about Coba today by means of your Coba Reborn online slot! This is an ancient Mayan city on the Yucatan Peninsula, located in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, so if you didn’t know that already, you learned something new today too. As for the game, this is a grid slot that utilises a 7×7 hexagonal symbol grid with cascading symbols and a cluster payout mechanic. The rest of the vital statistics will be instantly familiar to fans of ELK Studios’ typical output – a 25,000x stake maximum jackpot and a 94% return to player percentage.

The machine works via an interesting set of rules – a snake progress meter awards a random number of wilds when it is half full. The wilds are randomly placed after a symbol refill. Filling the snake progress meter will advance your current level, with the fourth and final level awarding six snakes at random positions on the sides of the playfield. What are these snakes? Ah, let’s not get ahead of ourselves! We’ve still got Blood, Rebirth, Ouroboros, and Hydra Orchids to discuss yet – in short, there’s a whole lot to unpack in Coba Reborn! Throw in ELK’s trademark X-iter bonus buy facility too, and this is probably going to be a fairly lengthy article. These guys always like to get their money’s worth, don’t they!

So, without further ado, let’s get down to business – our free demo slot of Coba Reborn is available to play below if you fancy trying out some test spins before you read our review.

Coba Reborn Slot
ProviderElk Studios
Reels7
Rows7
PaylinesCluster Pays
Bonus Rounds1
Bet Range0.20 - 100
VolatilityHigh
Max Win25,000x
Bonus BuyYes
RTP94.00%
Our Rating8.0

Coba Reborn Slot Casino Bonuses


Coba Reborn Slot Free Play


Coba Reborn Slot Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols

Coba Reborn Slot Paytable
Coba Reborn slot paytable

The last ELK machine that I reviewed was the fantastic Cygnus 3 – a worthy sequel and addition to a hugely popular line of online slots, but it’s still nice to be checking out something original for a change. Their previous title Propaganda was another Triple-A release, but I always feel disappointed by ELK’s insistence on limiting the RTP of their machines to just 94%. Two per cent below the industry average may not sound like a huge deal, but trust me – it will dramatically affect the amount of playtime you receive when playing these slots.

Wins are awarded in Coba Reborn for hitting clusters of five or more adjacent matching symbols – the hexagonal layout makes this easier than games which require you to line up matching symbols in horizontal or vertical configurations, but the tradeoff here is that the payouts are obviously a little smaller as a result. The top gold symbol has a maximum payout of 50x the total bet for a 15+ symbol combination, followed by 10x, 7.5x, and 5x for the red, blue, and green symbols, respectively. As for the low pays, these look similar – no boring royals here – but they are still drawn in rather dull colours. A 15+ combination of brown symbols will award you 2.5x your total bet, whilst the cyan and green varieties are a little less valuable at 2x and 1.5x each.

If you’ve read any of my ELK Studios reviews in the past, I’m sure you can guess what I’m about to say concerning the betting range. There are just 12 permitted wagers in total, with minimum/maximum limits of €0.20 and €100.00, respectively. That’s not nearly enough, in my opinion, and it means that you’ll be forced to make big jumps in bet sizes any time you wish to change your current stake.


Base Game & Modifiers

Coba Reborn Slot Base Game
Coba Reborn slot base game

Coba Reborn utilises a huge 7×7 playfield, which somehow manages to feel even larger because of its strange diagonal appearance. There are no pay ways or pay lines, as wins are instead awarded for hitting groups of between 5 and 15 adjacent matching symbols that connect on at least one of their six sides – it’s a bit like blockbusters really. Can I have a P, please Bob?


Snakes

The snake progress meter awards a random number of wilds when it is half full. The wilds are randomly placed after the first symbol refill, which can only occur as a result of winning symbols being removed from the grid. Filling the snake meter all the way will grant you an increased award that is dependent on your current level.

What purpose do the snakes serve? A snake is a linear cluster of symbols that gets longer as the snake moves across the symbol grid. It is always at least five symbols long and will always form part of a winning cluster. All symbols that a snake moves over are transformed into further segments of that snake.


Orchids

Orchids have several special abilities – the blood orchid can spawn a snake, whilst the hydra orchid spawns behind the head of a snake that eats a hydra orchid. The new snake will then continue with the same currently selected snake symbol. The Rebirth Orchid can resurrect snakes from the dead, whilst the Ouroboros Orchid can cross itself without dying – think of it like playing Snake on your old Nokia phone, only in cheat mode!


Crossing

If multiple snakes happen to cross each other on the playfield, they will gain multipliers which will sum together before being applied to your win.


Coba Reborn Slot Bonus Features

Coba Reborn Slot Bonus Round
Coba Reborn slot bonus round

There are no traditional scatter symbols necessary in Coba Reborn, as the ‘free drops’ bonus round is invoked by the snakes and their meters instead. More snakes naturally make for a more generous bonus round, but hitting the maximum of six of them is a big ask – if you want to see that part of the game, you’ll probably need to use the bonus buy facility.


X-iter Bonus Buy

The bonus buy menu has five different options – 2x the normal stake gets you a bonus bet with more than double the odds of reaching the first snake level, whilst 10x the bet guarantees you’ll get three orchids on your next round.

Dig deep under the sofa cushions for 25x the normal price per spin, and you can guarantee two blood orchids with crossing snakes, whilst 100x the bet will reward you with a ‘BALI BOOST’ – that’s three snakes to you and me! Finally, if you’re feeling a little bit crazy, you can pay 500x the normal price per spin for six snakes. Treat that last one with caution though – you’ll need a serious bankroll to fund a few of those features!


Pros

  • Beautiful presentation combined with an interesting layout and first-class design.
  • Innovative bonus triggering mechanism
  • The hexagonal grid layout works fantastically

Cons

  • The regular paytable prizes aren’t anything special.
  • The big multipliers only ever seem to kick in on the lower-paying symbols. Oh, what a complete shock!
  • 94% RTP really lets the game down.

Final Thoughts

I’ve spent far too long playing this slot tonight and could have written another 1,000 words about its many, many features and gameplay mechanics. Why didn’t I? Because I don’t want to spoil all the surprises for you because this is one game you certainly don’t want to miss! Good luck hitting that 25,000x jackpot though!

8.0

Top-Notch


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