Kraken’s Cove

Kraken's Cove: Slot Overview

Over the years, software provider Relax Gaming has shown a strong affinity for the sea if slots like Cowabunga Dream Drop, Lure of Fortune, and Shark Wash are any guide to the studio's inner thoughts and feelings. Like the Sirens of Greek myth, the ocean has called once again, and Relax Gaming has found itself drawn to the watery parts of the planet to design Kraken's Cove, a pirate slot built from the bones of Relax Gaming's 2022 release Plunderland.

Somehow, the giant Kraken beast arising from the sea during Kraken's Cove's intro animation manages to be both kinda cute and terrifying at the same time. Then, the game opens up properly, and cuteness is the overriding factor. This is due to the neat wee symbols aligned into a grid, neat wee islands dotting the border, and lovely clear blue water. It's a little bit like the view in the bonus round from Dead Man's Trail, but warmer and friendlier. In saying that, a skeleton in an armchair and sharks in the water stain the view with a measure of dread.

Floating on the top of the water is Kraken's Cove's 7x7 gaming grid, with a special hot spot highlighted in the very middle of the gaming area. This is a cluster pays slot, making winning combinations when 5 or more matching pay symbols are connected in horizontal or vertical directions. Winning symbols explode off the board, and the gaps they make are filled by symbols dropping into them. A medium-high volatile math model is onboard, sloshing out a default RTP of 96.1%. Kraken's Cove has a new upgraded feature buy to go with the regular one and a stake range of 10 c to $/€100.

Card suits, clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts are the lower value symbols, while the highs are a ship's wheel, a bottle of Kraken Juice, a hat, and a pirate. Clusters made up of 5 identical symbols are worth 0.1 to 0.5 times the bet, going up to 70x to 500x for a 32-of-a-kind cluster. Wild chest symbols do a couple of things in Kraken's Cove. One thing they can do is substitute for all regular symbols when wins are being evaluated.

Kraken's Cove: Slot Features

Collecting, expanding, and navigating are the order of the day in Kraken's Cove. Let's work out what that all means by examining the Ship Wild Expansion Collection, the Ship Wild, free spins, the free spins gamble, and feature buys.

Ship Wild Expansion Collection

Wild chest symbols land on the reels containing 1 to 5 coins. Coins are collected, and each 5 coins collected increases the size of the Ship Wild will when it reaches the hot spot. Coins are only collected in the base game when a win is present on the reels. In free spins, coins are always collected, regardless of whether there is a win or not.

Ship Wild

The 1x1 Ship Wild is present on every spin, and it moves 1 step closer to the hot spot in the centre of the grid each time a win takes place, whether it is part of a win or not. When the Ship Wild reaches the hot spot, it expands to 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, or 5x5, depending on the progress of the Wild Expansion Collection. Once it expands and creates a win, the Ship Wild is removed and replaced on the reels in a random position. The Ship Wild can reach the hot spot more than once in the same game round, increasing the size it can expand to and keeping the achieved multiplier. The Ship Wild has a multiplier, which increases each time it is involved in a win.

Free Spins

Players are awarded 5 free spins when 3 scatter symbols are collected in a game round. For the free spins feature, the Ship Wild Expansion and the Ship Wild's multiplier are persistent. The Ship Wild multiplier increases by +1 each time it is part of a cluster win and remains for the full duration of the round.

Free Spins Gamble

When free spins trigger, before they start, players can gamble for a greater number of free spins, up to 20, and/or an improved starting Ship's Wild multiplier value, up to 50. Successful gambles move players to the next highest level. Losing gambles drop players to the next lowest value. If there is no lower value, play returns to the base game.

Feature Buy

From the feature buy, players may buy free spins for 50x the bet or upgraded free spins for 250x the bet. Upgraded free spins have an enhanced starting level.

Kraken's Cove: Slot Verdict

Like Plunderland before it, Kraken's Cove is a game that is able to have you teetering right on the edge of your seat in hopeful anticipation. It's got a great quest feel about it when the action's moving along as the Wild Ship tacks its way from its position on the grid towards the hot spot in the middle. Helping build tension is the Ship Wild Expansion collection, collecting coins from wild symbols and increasing the possible Ship Wild size should it actually reach the hot spot. Each part contributed to creating highly entertaining sequences of events (when they all come together) in Plunderland, and they do so again in Kraken's Cove.

Plus a handful of extra parts, such as the revamped Ship Wild expansion method. Another is the ability to gamble at the start of a free spins round. This is tempting. Starting the Ship Wild's multiplier at x50, or even x10, is quite a thought. As is getting additional free spins, as 5 is not a lot. It's actually one less than players got in Plunderland. If the base game is able to get intense, free spins ratchet up that effect exponentially. Tracking the Wild Ship when it's displaying a solid multiplier value as it moves towards the hot spot with a chunky Expansion banked is quite a nail-biting experience.

Despite flurries of activity, the base game could be tight on actual monetary awards, but with wins of up to 10,000x a theoretical possibility, Kraken's Cove can dish out sizable amounts of dough when the time is right. As well as provoking slight surprise at seeing Relax Gaming return to Plunderland, Kraken's Cove is, like its predecessor, an absorbing slot that is able to unleash significant helpings of fist-pumping fun and head-in-hands despair.