Dead Man’s Crew

Dead Man's Crew: Slot Overview 

After a hard day of sailing the seven seas, sacking Cartagena, sinking galleons, and romancing the governor's offspring, what does a self-unrespecting pirate captain do but drag the crew ashore for a night of wild debauchery? That's the spirit software provider Slotmill has bottled for its buccaneering online slot Dead Man's Crew. Pirate slots are pretty common, so it takes more than a few skulls, treasure chests, and bottles of rum to make one stand out from the crowded waters. Dead Man's Crew attempts to do so with a blend of cluster pays, roaming wild multiplier symbols, free spins, and a selection of supplementary side features.

An unlucky tavern picked for the night of revelry plays host to Dead Man's Crew in both the base game and bonus round. Cap'n has planted himself and his mug at a table covered in doubloons, while the rest of the room is sadly devoid of his drinking companions. What is in the room are classic icons of the swashbuckling variety such as an anchor, Jolly Rogers, more coins, mugs, kegs, and a roaring fire to keep everything warm. Free spins are held in the same place, but the atmosphere takes on an eerie green glow, as Dead Man's Crew does that thing pirate slots often do and blur the lines between the material and the spirit realm. A delightful pirate ditty accompanies the action at all times, from the Hans Zimmer Sherlock Holmes-style tune in the base game to high seas drama music in free spins.

A 6x6 game grid is where the action occurs, and a big gaming area it is too, taking up much of the view of the surrounding drinking establishment. Winning combinations form when 5 or more matching symbols are connected to each other vertically or horizontally. All winning symbols except wilds vanish, causing symbols to fall in to fill the gaps. Avalanches repeat until a new win does not appear. Slotmill has alerted prospective players to the fact that this is a very highly volatile slot, and has designed two RTP variants topped by a 96.07% value. Players are able to stake $/€0.20 to $/€100, and Burst Mode is here alongside Fast Track buys.

Looking at the pay symbols from the lowest value on up, there are blue, green, orange, and pink gems, dice, cards, daggers in a target, frothy mugs of beer, and a pirate character symbol. Clusters made up of 5 matching symbols pay 0.1x to 0.7x the stake, up to winning combinations of 20+ OAK in size, worth 5x to 20x the stake.

Dead Man's Crew: Slot Features

Features that show up in this house of ill repute are wild multipliers, Hotspots, Crew Features, free spins, and Fast Track feature buys.

Wild Symbol

The wild substitutes for all other symbols. When a wild is part of a winning combination, it multiplies the win by the multiplier it displays. After being part of a win, the wild's multiplier increases by +1, and it moves to a new adjacent position before symbols drop. If more than one wild contributes to the same win, the multiplier values are added together. 

Feature Hotspots & Crew Features 

At the start of each spin, Feature Hotspots are placed randomly on the grid, highlighting their positions with a blue frame. If a symbol within a Feature Hotspot is part of a win, it triggers a Crew Feature:

• Transform - When no more wins are available, it transforms all instances of a chosen symbol on the reels as well as itself into another symbol. 
• Symbol Removal - When no more wins are available, all instances of a selected symbol are removed from the reels.
• Mystery Trail - When no more wins are available, this symbol moves towards a target position, converting all positions it moves over except wilds into mystery symbols. All mystery symbols transform into the same pay symbol.
• Wild Spawn - Activates when triggered by converting itself and up to 2 other symbols into wilds.
• Hotspot Generator - Activates when triggered by converting itself and up to 3 other positions into Feature Hotspots. 
• Wild Booster - Activates when triggered by adding +1 to the multiplier of all wilds. Only appears in free spins. 
• Wild Doubler - Activates when triggered by doubling the multiplier of all wilds. Only appears in free spins. 
• Extra Spins - Awards 2, 3, or 4 extra free spins when triggered, only in the free spins round though.

Free Spins 

When 3 or more wilds land on the reels, players win 8 free spins. Triggering wilds carry over to the round. During the free spins feature, wilds stay on the reels throughout, and their multipliers do not reset between spins. 

Fast Track & Xtra-Bet 

Fast Track lets players buy various features such as 1 wild for 5x, 2 wilds for 20x, 3 wilds to trigger free spins for 100x, or 4 wilds that also trigger free spins for 500x the stake. The X-tra Bet adds 50% extra to the stake, making it 1.9 times more likely to trigger free spins.

Dead Man's Crew: Slot Verdict 

Apart from the robbery, disease, and violence, being a pirate captain in the days of yore would have been a pretty neat life - in some, possibly romanticised, ways. You get to work outdoors, inhaling clean sea air with the brush of sunshine on your face; you're free from the nine-to-five grind, and can sail wherever your heart desires. No doubt the reality was a lot harder than it is often made out to be, but pirates make for excellent online slot subject matter, regardless, and Slotmill has made a lively example that should stir the blood of any keyboard buccaneer.

The gameplay should be appealing too, for gamblers enamoured with the Jammin' Jars, Dragonfall brand of action where wild symbols stay on the grid during cascades, increasing multipliers, and moving to new positions. It's a proven crowd pleaser, and it works as well in Dead Man's Crew as it does elsewhere. Leave it to free spins to ratchet the dial up, or hoist the main sail, or however you'd like to put it. Not only do wilds stay on the grid through cascades, but they stay on the grid until the very end of the round, more than capable of accumulating tidy multiplier values as they power their way through wins. When all is going well. Winning potential is capped at 10,000x the bet, evidence of Dead Man's Crew's ability to swashbuckle with the best of them, while keeping in mind that it is 'very highly' volatile, so bonus rounds may meander in calm waters, rather than lead the charge into battle, or some such pirate-related metaphor.

While the main feature might have come to the attention of gamblers many years ago now, Dead Man's Crew utilises it well, while also deploying Crew Features from time to time to add depth to the experience as a whole. Overall, Dead Man's Crew is a decent addition to both the pirate genre and the set of games that feature sticky, roaming wild multipliers, with the ability to induce anything from sea sickness to hook-pumping joy on its volatile voyage.