Smooth Sailing

Smooth Sailing: Slot Overview

This is going back a bit, but does anyone remember the Thanksgiving day classic 'Planes, Trains, and Automobiles' starring Steve Martin and the late John Candy? Just one person is enough to keep this going. So the two comics were diverted due to bad weather and had to cross half the USA by any means possible to get home for thanksgiving. This is pure speculation, yet there is a possibility, however slight, that the film might have been on the minds of Gold Coin Studios when they came up with Smooth Sailing. The provider is in the process of designing travel-based slots to showcase their Connectify Pays system. There's this one, Smooth Sailing, and another train-themed slot on the way – so far.

Some people are boat people and enjoy rolling across the seas to exotic destinations on an organised cruise. Others can't stand the thought of being at sea for days on end with thousands of passengers stuck on a ship sucking back overpriced drinks trying not to get food poisoning. If you find yourself in the former group, Smooth Sailing could be just the thing as it takes place aboard a ship, bound for somewhere presumably warm and sunny - captained by a friendly lady holding a fistful of golden tickets which are used to trigger free spins. The first impression is of one of those mega organised holidays where visitors get a week of being herded from their beds to breakfast tables, onto morning activities, lunch, afternoon events, and dinner, capped by strait-laced evening entertainment designed not to offend anybody. The music's jolly, though.

Utilising a 5-reel, 20-payline setup, bets come in two categories. Default options range from 20 p/c to $/€40 per spin. If, however, the Gold Coin Bet feature is activated, the stake is multiplied by 1.5x. The benefit of doing so is ticket scatters are added to the base game reels, doubling the chance of triggering free spins. The RTP also comes in two forms, so be on the lookout for the 96.22% version rather than the lower 94.19% one. The game might look cheerful, but beneath the veneer lies a highly volatile math model, running alongside decent if not extraordinary winning potential.

For some reason, Smooth Sailing really likes to do things in twos, and this tendency extends to the royal symbols on the paytable. These lower-value 9-A tiles are worth 5-7.5x the bet in the base game, increasing to ten times that amount in free spins. During the bonus game, royals are worth even more than the premium bell, wheel, anchor, and captain's hat symbols, which payout 25 to 50 times the stake for five of a kind. Wilds round off this section, landing anywhere on the board during the base game only. Wilds substitute any normal pay symbol, and are worth up to 1,000x the bet for a line of five.

Smooth Sailing: Slot Features

The Connectify Pays system is the requisite tool for scoring big wins in Smooth Sailing and is available in free spins, which are triggered in two different ways:

• If the Gold Coin Bet is activated, then 10 free spins are awarded when 3 ticket scatters are in view on the grid.
• Otherwise, if 3 ship scatters symbols land, whether the Gold Coin Bet is on or not, they award 10 free spins.

Free spins is where Connectify Pays comes into play. If you look to the left side of the screen, you'll see a list of boats of varying colours and sizes next to prize values. Let's use the top yellow boat as an example. This one is split into 5 segments, so if 5 yellow boat symbols land along winning paylines from the leftmost reel to the right, the applicable prize is awarded. Moreover, if an x2 icon is present on the last reel, any five symbol Connectify Pays wins are doubled. On a last note, free spins can be retriggered as well.

Smooth Sailing: Slot Verdict

If you like tooling around on boats or looking for an unusual sort of jackpot game, Smooth Sailing might well have you covered. It lives up to its name, too, the base game bobbing along for the most part in a pretty uneventful manner. The game rules didn’t seem to mention this, but there was a very noticeable difference between betting lower stakes and high. Free spins triggered far more often the greater the bet. Whether this was pure coincidence or not isn't clear - just something to keep in mind.

Free spins were kind of fun when boats landed on the first reel and started making their way along paylines via the Connectify system. Three-reel boat wins were quite common. Anything beyond that was rare. Five symbol boat combos were unicorns. It's understandable in the case of the yellow boat because landing five of this type is worth a payout of 6,000x the bet. The red and blue boats are a lot less impressive. Five red boat symbols get you 250x, while five blues are worth 50x. In fact, the best results we achieved during our test sessions were from 5 royal symbol combinations since they are worth 10 times what they are in the base game. A welcome oddity.

Smooth Sailing turned out to be okay, pretty holidayish. The base game can be like staring at an unchanging sea between ports, but free spins increase the tension via Connectify Pays wins and decent royal values. The good news for players who like the look of Smooth Sailing is it seems Gold Coin is bringing out more like it. There's a train version for one, and who knows, they might extend the format to other forms of transportation in the future.