Taco Brothers Derailed

Taco Brothers Derailed: Slot Overview

As the saying goes, 'during a gold rush, sell shovels', and there is a lot of wisdom to the maxim. However, selling mining supplies can be a time-consuming business, so there are always those, like Evil Captain Diaz, who would rather just steal people's gold – and their freedom. This brings us to Taco Brothers Derailed from software provider ELK Studios, the third slot in the series and the biggest, tacoiest one so far.

The original Taco Brothers slot took place in the sleepy village of Santa Maria, which is where we return for Derailed. Only this time, a gold rush is on, bringing 'gold, tacos, and trains for everyone.' Sounds alright, but beware, Captain Diaz also returns with his dastardly ways to ruin the party. It's the player's job to team up with the three brothers and the mysterious Señorita to help out and hopefully win a few coins along the way. Derailed is darker looking than the original sunshiny slot, and Santa Maria doesn't really feel like a town in the middle of a gold boom. It's like a grimmer version of Wild Toro 2, lacking the original game's feel-good visuals, though the soundtrack is a bouncy, upbeat Spanish sensation.

Amazingly, Taco Brothers part one came out in 2015, so there's no surprise to see one or two statistical u-turns have taken place. Max win is the most obvious one, but other things like volatility have been increased to 'High' (7 out o 10), while RTP has headed in the opposite direction, coming in at 95%. This value applies whether you play in the regular mode, where paid spins cost 20 p/c to $/€100, or when one of the five X-iter modes is activated.

The grid's gown too. Now the game area consists of 6-reels, 4-rows and is crossed by 466 connecting paylines. Winning combinations begin on the leftmost reel and pay left to right on adjacent reels but must be touching either horizontally or diagonally to do so. The three brothers make up the highest paying symbols, worth 5-50x the bet for six of a kind, then below them are shakers, whistles, skulls, lanterns, and safes, slinging wins worth 0.5-2x the bet for a line of six. There is a stack of wild action to be found in Taco Brothers Derailed, including a plain regular one. All of which substitute for any pay symbol.

Taco Brothers Derailed: Slot Features

Several of Derailed's features have direct links to the original slot, though, on the whole, the game has had a major overhaul. Let's start with Walking Wilds and Walking Multiplier Wilds. All Taco Brother pay symbols can land as Walking Wilds. They move one space to the left, and each step triggers a respin. Respins end when Walking Wilds fall off the leftmost side. Walking Wilds also turn any corresponding Taco Brother pay symbol wild. The Walking Multiplier Wild is a little different and appears on the top row only. It carries a multiplier, and all regular wilds in view are given the same multiplier. Like the Brothers, these wilds generate respins for each step left they take.

Taco Train Heist

Bonus symbols are present on reels 2, 3, 4 or 5, and landing exactly 3 of them triggers the Taco Train Heist bonus round. All three Walking Wild Taco Brothers are guaranteed to land during the bonus game. Each brother is added to reel 6 one at a time, and they move left one position per spin, carrying a multiplier that changes on each step.

Pico lands first on the bottom row, generating a respin for each step left he takes. When Pico walks off the grid or is imprisoned, the second brother Pepe lands on the right-hand side of the second row. Once Pepe has walked off or been imprisoned, Paso appears on the third row. The bonus round ends when all brothers are locked and/or have fallen off the grid. When a brother walks off the grid, his multiplier is added to the multipliers of remaining Walking Wild Taco Brothers in view.

There are two more key symbols. One is Captain Diaz, who lands only on the first reel. When he hits, he imprisons the brother closest to the first reel, turning him into a locked, valueless blocker tile. The second is the Señorita, landing on the rightmost reel. When she hits, she either unlocks a locked Taco Brother or sends the one closest to the first reel back to the sixth reel.

Taco Smash N' Grab

This feature is awarded when 4 bonus symbols land in the base game. This feature starts with all three Walking Wild Taco Brothers plus a walking wild symbol stacked on reel 6. They all move in sync, one step left, triggering a respin as they move. In this Super Bonus round, Captain Diaz is wild and cannot lock any of the Walking Wild Taco Brothers. Should the Señorita hit, she pulls a Walking Wild Taco Brother to reel 6. The feature ends when Walking Wild Taco Brothers walk off the grid.

X-iter

The second way of playing Taco Brothers Derailed is in feature buy mode by clicking the X-iter button, if present. This provides these five options:

• Bonus Hunt – 2x the bet to double the chance of triggering the bonus game.
• Walking Wild Taco Brother – 10x the bet for one spin with a guaranteed Walking Wild Taco Brother.
• Walking Multiplier Wild – 25x the bet for one spin with a guaranteed Walking Multiplier Wild.
• Bonus – 100x the bet to trigger the bonus game.
• Super Bonus – 500x the bet to trigger Taco Smash N' Grab.

Taco Brothers Derailed: Slot Verdict

Around seven years have passed since the first Taco Brothers game dropped, and some things have changed, some things have stayed the same. ELK has used the time to hone their development chops, and Taco Brothers Derailed is evidence of the studio's willingness to constantly evolve. This is a slot that returns many of the first game's best bits, conducts a set of major feature tweaks, and incorporates a few lessons learned from slots like Wild Toro 2. Derailed is once again about getting those Walking Wild Taco Brothers onto the reels, avoiding the Captain, and looping as many respins together as possible. This time, there are even more incentives to keep the Taco Brothers in view as long as possible.

These incentives include multipliers and the way Walking Wilds turn corresponding Taco Brother symbols wild. Both are useful on their own but are something else when combined in the Super Bonus Round. Since all three brothers are active in the Taco Smash N' Grab, they can transform a lot of symbols into wilds. They also can't be imprisoned, which might be irritating when dead symbols are clogging up the grid in the regular bonus round. Interestingly, while the Super Bonus was more exciting, we tended to get better returns relative to the X-iter cost from the regular bonus round. Strange when you consider there's usually just one Walking Wild Taco Brother at a time unless the Señorita steps in to let bros out of prison, blasting extra life into the non-Super round. At max taco-ness, payers can win up to 10,000 times their stake in Taco Brothers Derailed.

Taco Brothers Derailed has more dramatic ups downs than the less volatile, less potentially lucrative previous Taco Brothers slots and is an outstanding continuation of the series. It's a demonstration of ELK's onwards and upwards trajectory, as the team brings together the best parts of the original slot while jacking the gameplay, tease, and excitation to more extreme levels.