Book of Captain Silver

Book of Captain Silver: Slot Overview

Here's one to get you in the mood – what has eight eyes and eight legs? The answer: eight (stereotypical) pirates. Titled Book of Captain Silver, today's offshore antics come from Microgaming partner All41 Studios, who have taken one of the most popular game mechanics, chucked on a doublet, some breeches, a cutlass, and shipped off a pirate-themed 'book of' slot. However, they have done more than just creating a swashbuckling 'Ra'. The studio has also sweetened the deal by adding on 4 fixed jackpots to accompany the free spins expanding symbols feature central to these sorts of games.

Down in the bowls of Captain Silver's ship is where players find themselves when the game hits the screen. All41 has gone for gritty realism, filling the view with mouldy wooden planks, skulls, candles, and barrels containing mystery cargo; let's pretend gold coins. It makes a change from the usual deck setting, sails full of trade winds, as a ship powers across the waves under a clear Caribbean sky. The other significant change can be seen right away at the left-hand side of the screen. Here, 4 jackpots are located displaying multiples of the total stake, while a chest rests beneath the reels to be filled when scatter symbols land. The rest of the game has been set up to the usual 'book of' specifications, meaning 5 reels, 3 rows, and 10 fixed paylines.

All41 has designed Book of Captain Silver to run on any device, allowing players to set bets from 20 p/c to $/€25 per spin. The RTP comes in three forms, the most generous being a healthy 96.40%, but lookout for a 94.24% version, or less, depending on the market. All are highly volatile and power out a win every three spins or so, or 30.71% of the time to be exact.

Wins line up when at least two premiums or three low pay symbols land left to right from the first reel. Lower value symbols include 10-A card royals, while compasses, pistols, ships, and Captain Silver make up the high pays. On a side note, when delving into the game, we came across some trivia that stated compasses were invented in China around the 2nd century BC and were called South Pointing Fish. What's really interesting is they weren’t originally used for navigation but geomancy instead. Anyway, values are at the upper end of the 'book of' spectrum, with five of a kind premium wins triggering payouts worth 75 to 500 times the stake.

Book of Captain Silver: Slot Features

Book of Captain Silver being what it is, one of the main features is its free spins bonus round where symbols are chosen to expand for potentially big wins. However, it's not the only extra, and All41 has also included several jackpots which don’t often appear on these sorts of slots.

Pirates weren't exactly renowned for their bookish tendencies, yet a mighty tome is used in Book of Captain Silver as both wild and scatter symbol. As a wild, it replaces any pay symbol to complete regular line wins. As a scatter, 3, 4, or 5 in view award 10 free spins plus a payout of 2, 20, or 200 times the stake, respectively.

Before free spins start, the book flips its pages to randomly select one of the high or low pay symbols. After initial rewards have been paid out on a free spin, if the chosen symbol can create a win, it expands to fill all positions on its reel. Expanded symbols pay all lines from any position – they do not have to start on reel one and do not need to be adjacent to each other. Wilds cannot be picked to be expanding symbols, nor do they substitute expanded symbols either.

Moving on to the next feature, whenever a wild symbol lands, it is collected in a chest located at the bottom of the screen. Collecting wild scatters grants a chance of triggering a spin of the jackpot wheel. Once activated, a ship's wheel, divided into segments and covered in jewels, spins once. Whatever coloured jewel it lands on, a corresponding jackpot is awarded. The 4 jackpots are the Mini, Minor, Major, and Mega, worth 15x, 50x, 500x, and 10,000x the bet, respectively.

Book of Captain Silver: Slot Verdict

For the most part, you know exactly what you are getting if launching Book of Captain Silver, though it's not quite as vanilla as All41's first contribution to the genre Book of Atem. It’s a satisfactory 'book of' entry, using pirates rather than Pharaohs and Egyptian Gods to theme the action. Some may find the background imagery a bit dingy. Its realistic representation of life at sea wouldn’t exactly be a great way of recruiting swabs to the cause compared to enticing them with something warmly exotic. Yet, it gets the job done and is a bit more original.

You barely notice it after a while anyway, when the book symbols are landing and features start to trigger. Well, free spins at least; the jackpot feature proved extremely tricky to activate, also sort of fading into the background. There's no faulting Book of Captain Silver's free spins round either where full-screen captain wins are worth 5,000 times the bet if five land to expand. It's nice to know there is a secondary way of possibly winning big too, and the Mega Jackpot offers twice the rewards 'book of' slots typically come with. Well, the regular ones, not the anomalies like Book of Shadows or Book of Muertitos.

In summation, Book of Captain Silver does just about everything by the book (sorry), so it won't upset purists, but its additions are an extra drawcard. If players are casting their eye around for a new 'book' slot to play, then offering four jackpots that most others don’t won't hurt Book of Captain Silver's appeal.