Cursed Seas: Slot Review and Free Play Demo

Cursed Seas Review

We have seen plenty of pirate slots in our time, and a fair share of zombie pirate slots as well, but nothing quite like what Hacksaw has come up with in Cursed Seas. We are talking about the excellent and almost renaissance quality artwork mostly, as the gameplay itself is pretty familiar stuff from this versatile developer. You get an innovative twist to the features though, which is not uncommon with this developer either, and the soundtrack fits the bill as well.

The seas are about as rough as the volatility of this game, so buckle up for a swashbuckling ride into the unknown. Cursed chests create cursed areas and additive reel multipliers in both the base game and in the free spins round, and everything just keeps building during the feature. The other bonus game is all about accumulating the largest possible bet multiplier via 3 different symbols, and it’s a hold-and-win style feature. The 12,500x potential is solid, and the artwork alone makes this game well worth checking out.

Cursed Seas Slot - Reels Screen

Cursed Seas Slot Features

The character premium symbols pay between 3 and 10 x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, and both the regular Wild symbol and the Cursed Chest symbol step in for pay symbols to help complete and/or improve wins.

When the Cursed Chest appears it creates a Cursed Area from its own position and up to the top of the grid. However, this only happens when at least one of the cursed positions will be involved in a win. The Cursed Chest then opens up to reveal a multiplier of x2 to x200, and this becomes the reel multiplier. Multipliers are added together if more than one reel gets this upgrade, and it will boost all line wins that involve the relevant reel or reels.

The Sunken Treasure Bonus Round triggers from 3 lantern scatters, and this awards 10 free spins. The Cursed Chest will always open in the bonus round, and a Cursed Area is created that remains sticky until the end of the feature. The multiplier from any chest is added to the total win multiplier, and all wins in cursed areas are boosted accordingly. You get +2, +4, or +6 extra spins when you land 2, 3, or 5 lantern scatters on the same free spin, respectively.

The Dead Men Tell No Tales Bonus Game triggers when you land 4 lantern scatters in the base game, and you start with 3 spins in the tally. You will land only Cursed Skulls, Tormented Skulls, Kraken, or blank symbols during this hold and win style feature. Cursed skull symbols add their multiplier value to the multiplier above the relevant reel, while also creating a cursed area as in the base game.

The cursed skull symbols can add values between +1 and +500 to the reel multiplier, while the tormented skulls boost the current reel multiplier by a multiplier of x2 to x25. The kraken symbol comes with values between +1 and +500, and its value is added to all reel multipliers. Each non-blank symbol that lands reset the spin tally to 3 each time, and the feature ends when you run out of spins. All reel multipliers are then added to the cursed positions, while being summed up and paid.

The Feature Buy menu is available in some jurisdictions, but not in the UK for sure. It comes with 3 options this time:

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins (top-tier RTP of 96.21 % and very high volatility) - pay 3x your stake to increase your bonus round chances by 5x.
• Sunken Treasure FS (top-tier RTP of 96.26 % and high volatility) - pay 100x your stake to get this bonus round.
• Dead Men Tell No Tales (top-tier RTP of 96.33 % and high volatility) - pay 200x your stake to get this bonus round.

The 200 Spins Cursed Seas Slot Experience

You get a brief taste of the base game, before we purchase the Sunken Treasure bonus round at 0:40 into the 4-minute highlights video. We then purchase the Dead Men Tell No Tales feature around the 2-minute mark, and you can see for yourself how we fared by hitting the play button below.

Review Summary

The artwork in Cursed Seas is of a quality that you don’t see too often in online slots, but it’s also very static with no animations. Still, you get to see some stunning masterpiece backdrops in this game, and the cursed chests can reveal solid multipliers also in the base game. The multipliers are added together, which can lead to larger wins, and the symbol values aren’t too shabby either. Not least when you consider what kind of win multipliers are possible.

The recipe does not stray far from what we are used to from Hacksaw by now, but it still feels like a fresh new game with its own quirks and peculiarities. The free spins round is basically an enhanced version of the base game, and the hold and win style game is probably your best shot at cracking the generous 12,500x potential. Both features are capable of large payouts though, but keep in mind that this is a pretty volatile game overall.