Crowned Corners

Crowned Corners: Slot Overview

It's back to the Middle Ages we're going with Hacksaw partner Bullshark Games for some battling and reigning themed action. The slot is Crowned Corners, and it's interesting how, back then, the boss was the one wearing the most expensive hat. He, and it was mostly males back then, also probably had the best army in the land in order to keep enemies at bay and the local populace subdued. This is the world of Crowned Corners, where instead of swords and shields, players are armed with a corner mechanic that can reveal a number of useful special symbols.

It seems that Bullshark Games has landed on a graphical style it likes, as Crowned Corners joins the ranks of other cuties like Paper Biker, Godly Gains, and Bullride Loot. These are slots starring feisty yet adorable main characters in game worlds that might be serious in some ways, but have been presented as all cute and cuddly. In Crowned Corners, this means a war is going on, but if you look at the combatants in the background, they seem more concerned with waving their weapons around than actually hitting their enemies. Like a theatrical stage show, dramatic without being dangerous. Free spins are held in a castle, meaning the king must have won the battle and retained his crown.

Crowned Corners is held on a 5-reel grid, with the four corner positions dedicated to the Royal Tower feature. When certain symbols are in the corners, there can be up to 3,125 ways to win. At 3 out of 5, Crowned Corners is medium volatile, and has a default RTP of 96.3% when betting $/€0.10 to $/€50 per spin.

The symbols on the paytable are J-A royals, awarding 0.5x for 5 OAK, then helms, swords, armour, cups, and crowns paying 1.5x to 5x the stake for a 5-of-a-kind winning line. Wilds substitute all paying symbols, are worth 20x for 5 OAK, and may appear on any reel. A cascading wins mechanism means winning symbols vanish, causing a refill of the grid, repeating like this till no new win appears.

Crowned Corners: Slot Features

The game's title is linked to the Royal Tower feature, available in the base game and in the two bonus rounds. Four feature buys are also available.

Royal Tower

The grid has four Royal Tower positions at the top and bottom of the leftmost and rightmost reels. During the spins, each Royal Tower reveals a blank or a special symbol. Empty Royal Towers can reveal a new special symbol or a blank on cascades. The special symbols are:

• Add - A full line of matching paytable symbols (could be wilds) is added in one of three directions when the grid settles. Vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. The Royal Tower empties after symbols have been added. New symbols can include wilds, but existing wilds are not overlaid with new symbols, nor are existing symbols of the added type. If more than one Royal Tower adds symbols, they will all be of the same type, but in different directions.
• Wild - The Royal Tower locks a wild in place till it is part of a win. When used in a win, the Royal Tower becomes empty again.
• Wild With Multiplier - The position becomes a wild holding a multiplier of x2 to x25. It remains on the grid till the end of the spin, doubling its multiplier value with each win on the grid, whether the wild was part of the win or not. The multiplier applies to wins that the wild is a part of.
• Scatter Symbols - Remains in place till the end of the spin. Three or four scatters in view trigger free spins.

Kings Bounty

Getting 3 scatters triggers the Kings Bounty feature with 10 free spins. It keeps the base game mechanics but has a higher chance of revealing special symbols in the Royal Towers. Each scatter awards +1 free spin before the win evaluation. Then the Royal Tower is imported and may reveal new special symbols.

Castle Conquest

Getting 4 scatters triggers the Castle Conquest bonus with 10 free spins. It functions like the Kings Bounty except that at least one Royal Tower is guaranteed to reveal a special symbol on every spin.

Feature Buys

Feature buys include BonusHunt FeatureSpins at 3x, making each spin 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus, and Tower Power FeatureSpins at 50x, which guarantee at least 2 Royal Tower reveals. Kings Bounty costs 100x to buy, or Castle Conquest can be bought for 250x the bet.

Crowned Corners: Slot Verdict

Bullshark Games continues to drop slots that look like Saturday morning cartoons, yet are able to wind up a sizable punch. Maybe not a heavyweight contender punch, but one which may rattle the skull around if its features are stepping up. In this case, we've got features that brought to mind Pragmatic Play's slot Candy Corner, though with enough distance placed between the two slots to provide variation. For one, Crowned Corners is a ways to win game, where extra symbols in the corners create more ways, and the Add symbol is arguably more desirable than it would have been if paylines were evaluating wins. The vertical Add is okay, but the horizontal and diagonal are good for potentially creating cross-grid wins.

Cascades and Royal Tower refills work together to help keep the ball rolling. The base game was a little unexciting, as hitting special symbols could be few and far between. Though this is to be expected. Moving to the two bonus rounds ups the entertainment value, technically climaxing in the Castle Conquest round since special symbols are guaranteed on each spin. Special symbols were noticeably more abundant during Kings Bounty, as well, when compared to the base game, where sequences of cascading wins, special symbols, and refills are possible.

Should players 'conquer every corner and claim the crown', the reward for doing so is 15,000x their stake. And so, while Crowned Corners might not conquer all competition to be crowned ruler of the iGaming realm, its gimmick has enough of a hook, and its Medieval theme is whimsical enough to warrant a war or two.