Let me get the party started with this one: what has eight eyes and eight legs? There are, in fact, eight (typical) pirates. All41 Studios, a Microgaming partner, has taken one of the most popular game mechanisms, the ‘book of’, and applied it to a pirate theme in a slot game called Book of Captain Silver. But they have done more than simply make a badass “Ra.” The free spins with expanding symbols is a staple of these games, and the studio has upped the ante by introducing four fixed jackpots.
When the game starts, the player is dropped into one of Captain Silver’s ship’s bowls. All41 has opted for grim realism by populating the scene with rotting wooden boards, skulls, candles, and barrels filled with what may or may not be gold money. It’s not every day that you see a ship racing across the Caribbean with the trade winds filling its sails. The left side of the screen is where the other noticeable alteration has occurred. Here you’ll find four jackpots, each of which is a multiplier of your wager, plus a treasure chest that will be refilled by scatter symbols. The game has been configured with the standard ‘book of’ settings, including 5 reels, 3 rows, and 10 fixed paylines.
Book of Captain Silver was developed by All41 to function on any platform, with wagers ranging from 20 pence to £/€25. There are three different versions of the RTP, the highest of which pays out a hefty 96.40 percent, but keep an eye out because the number might be as low as 94.24 percent in some regions. All of them are extremely risky, but they manage to pay out around once every three spins (or 30.71 percent of the time).
Two premium symbols or three low pay symbols landing in a line from left to right on the first reel guarantees a win. The lower value symbols are the 10s and A’s of the royal deck, while the higher value symbols include compasses, pistols, ships, and Captain Silver. In the course of our research, we learned that the compass was developed in China about the 2nd century BC, when it was known as the South Pointing Fish. What’s fascinating is that they weren’t first employed for navigation but rather geomancy. Five of a kind premium wins trigger payouts worth between 75% and 500% of the stake, therefore values are more than average for the ‘book of’ genre.
Slot Functions in the Captain Silver’s Book
With the free spins bonus round in Book of Captain Silver, players can pick symbols to enlarge, increasing their chances of winning. But that’s not all; All41 has also incorporated a number of jackpots that aren’t often found on slots of this type.
Book of Captain Silver uses a massive tome as both a wild and scatter symbol, despite the fact that pirates were not known for their penchant for reading. For normal line wins, the wild can stand in for any other pay sign. If there are three, four, or five scatters in view, you will receive 10 free games and a payoff of 2, 20, or 200 times your initial wager.
Just before the bonus spins begin, the book will turn to a random page, revealing either a high- or low-paying symbol. If the chosen symbol can make a win after the first payouts on a free spin, it will grow to occupy all spaces on its reel. Any combination of expanding symbols, regardless of where they appear on the reels or whether they are close to one another, will result in a payout for the whole active payline. Wilds can’t be chosen to be expanding symbols, and they can’t be used as a replacement for expanded symbols.
The next perk is that a treasure box appears at the bottom of the screen and is filled with wild symbols whenever they appear. Collecting wild scatters provides a chance of triggering a spin of the jackpot wheel. When turned on, a segmented ship’s wheel that’s been lavishly decorated with gems revolves once. Whatever colored diamond it lands on, a corresponding jackpot is rewarded. Mini, Minor, Major, and Mega are the four jackpots, at 15, 50, 500, and 10,000 times the wager, respectively.
Judgment in the Slot Book of Captain Silver
Book of Captain Silver is, for the most part, precisely what you’d expect it to be, but it’s not quite as bland as All41’s initial offering in the genre, Book of Atem. This is a good ‘book of’ entry that substitutes pirates for Egyptian pharaohs and gods and still manages to entertain. The scenery may look a little dreary to some people. Its depiction of marine life as it actually is wouldn’t exactly win over landlubbers to the cause as would the use of warm, exotic imagery to do so. Still, it serves its purpose and represents an attempt at innovation.
Once the book symbols begin to fall and the bonus features begin to function, you won’t even see it anymore. The jackpot feature was difficult to trigger and gradually faded into the background, but at least there were free spins. In the free spins round of Book of Captain Silver, if five captain symbols land to expand, you earn 5,000 times your original wager. It’s comforting to know that there is an additional opportunity to win large, and the Mega Jackpot provides double the benefits that regular ‘book of’ slots do. Not the weird ones like the Book of Shadows or the Book of Muertitos, but the usual ones.
Overall, Book of Captain Silver follows the rules (excuse the pun) to a T and won’t offend purists, while its alterations are a welcome bonus. The fact that Book of Captain Silver has four jackpots when most other ‘book’ slots only have two is sure to attract gamers who are on the lookout for a new slot to play.