Captain Glum Pirate Hunter: Slot Overview
Pirate slots might be a dime a dozen, but pirate hunter slots? There aren’t many of those, maybe none. Till now, that is, thanks to provider Play’n GO which has enlisted the help of a salty sea dog by the name of Captain Glum to hunt some buccaneers down. The resulting slot is Captain Glum Pirate Hunter, and this different angle on the pirate slot theme stocks its hold with features like a permanent roaming wild in the base game, free spins with expanding reels, and a Treasure Hunt extra.
Captain Glum Pirate Hunter’s unusual take on the subject of high seas piracy displays its base game action from an unusual vantage point, as well. While the game serves up the sort of blue seas, golden sands, and palm trees which often appear in a pirate slot, it does so from a bird’s eye view looking down. A neat animation opens the game, showing two boats blasting cannons at each other, but surrender any thoughts that Captain Glum Pirate Hunter is going to be a saltily realistic pirate game like NetEnt‘s Rage of the Seas or Relax Gaming‘s Dead Man’s Trail. It’s closer in spirit to say Yggdrasil Gaming‘s Pirates Smugglers Paradise or Pirates 2: Mutiny. That sort of cartoony, friendly, we might be pirates, but we’re good people deep down and wouldn’t really hurt anyone vibe. Admittedly Captain Glum does look like he lives up to his name, though.
Available on any device, Captain Glum Pirate Hunter takes bets from 5 p/c per spin up to £/€100 per spin at the upper game’s upper limit. The maximum return to player value hovers around 96%, though as per usual, there are lower versions available, so always check the help file. Highly volatile, the action is held on a 5-reel game grid with 3 rows as default, but which can be expanded in free spins, and in both phases it uses a connecting paylines system for creating winning combinations.
Symbol time and Captain Glum Pirate Hunter has 8 regular paying ones in its arsenal. These are low-pay diamonds, spades, clubs and hearts paying 0.6 times the bet for 5 OAK, then pirate ships, pirate hunter ships, a pirate, and Captain Glum as the premium symbols worth 1 to 5 times the bet for a 5-of-a-kind win. Wake Wilds, which are explained below, substitute any pay symbol and also have the same value as Captain Glum if they create wins of wilds.
Captain Glum Pirate Hunter: Slot Features
When it comes to extras, Captain Glum Pirate Hunter has a Permanent Wild, Captains Due, and free spins with Broadside, Pirates Hunters vs Pirates, and Treasure Hunt features.
Permanent Wild
In the base game, a Permanent Wild symbol is always present on the reels. Only on the middle three reels, though, where it moves to a new position on each regular spin. This Permanent Wild can substitute for any symbol except the scatter.
Captain’s Due
When one or more scatters land, the Captain’s Due feature is triggered. One of the scatters is picked randomly and replaced by the Permanent Wild. The Permanent Wild then moves along, leaving Wake Wilds as it does so.
Free Spins
Also, in the base game, landing 3 or more scatters triggers the free spins bonus round. In free spins, a Pirate Hunter flagship is displayed at the bottom of the reels with a Pirate flagship up top. As part of the Broadside feature, ships fire at each other, and destroying segments of the hull can expand the reels up to 5 positions in height. Cannons may take 1, 2, or 3 spins to reload.
Where the Pirate Hunters vs Pirates element comes in is when flagships sink the other side’s ship symbols, points are awarded. If the Pirate Hunters have the highest score at the end of free spins, the Treasure Hunt is triggered. When triggered, the Treasure Hunt flashes 3 treasure chests on the screen. Players pick one to win a multiplier of x2, x3, or x10, which is applied to the total win achieved during the free spins round.
Captain Glum Pirate Hunter: Slot Verdict
For players partial to a bit of piracy on the reels, then Captain Glum Pirate Hunter has quite a lot to offer. Maybe not so much if you’re idea of slot-based pirating means getting your fingers dirty in a grubby, grimy game full of characters that look like they’d stab you in the back the first chance they get, the weather’s on the brink of going full hurricane, and the leaky tub bobby up and down on the water is being held together by sheer goodwill and three rusty nails. Captain Glum Pirate Hunter is brighter, bubblier, as if pirating involves standing on the deck, one foot on a railing, hair blowing soulfully in the breeze, while merchants and foreign powers throw loot into the hold for you and the sons or daughters of every port governor from here to Port Royal trip over themselves for your hand in marriage.
Maybe not quite that over the top, and while Captain Glum Pirate Hunter might look pretty amicable, it’s still an online slot, after all. What’s useful in some ways, though, is the Permanent Wild, which forever circles the three middle reels in the base game like a goldfish in a bowl waiting for feeding time. Every now and then, linking wins, at others, dumping Wake Wilds overboard to again, occasionally link wins. Pretty fun, and so is free spins, where the battle between pirate and pirate hunter kicks off in earnest. Blast a few hulls, open up the reels, shoot a ship or two, and Captain Glum Pirate Hunter has the wind in its sails to generate wins as high as 9,000 times the bet.
A big number and one that adds a lot of weight to Captain Glum Pirate Hunter even though PnG slots aren’t directly known to dish out max wins left and right. Without it, the game might have been in danger of feeling a little thinner, a little flimsy otherwise. But it’s there, as a possibly substantial reward to tempt potential users in like a big red ‘X’ on a map.
Good
Without the high max win potential, Captain Glum Pirate Hunter might have been in danger of feeling a little thinner, a little flimsy otherwise. But it’s there, as a possibly substantial reward to tempt potential users in like a big red ‘X’ on a map.
