Cursed Seas

Theme and Design

Cursed Seas is one of Hacksaw’s darker slots whose artwork immediately reminded us of their zombie apocalypse game, Rotten, when we loaded it up. It’s all dark portents, boiling seas and dangerous sea monsters depicted with grainy artwork. Meanwhile, a weirdly hypnotic piano soundtrack plays in the background. If you like your pirate slots in the vein of Relax Gaming’s Dead Man’s Trail rather than Captain Pugwash then this is a game for you!

RTP and Variance

Cursed Seas has four available RTP settings at 96.22%, 94.24%, 92.21% or 88.38%. The highest RTP of 96.22% is solid for an online slot, just above average. However, it is down to your casino to choose which setting to run the game at. We verified the RTP at five popular slot sites. This is what we found:

• Casumo (independent): 94.24%
• BacanaPlay (Skill on Net): 92.21%
• Barz (White Hat Gaming): 94.24%
• All British Casino (L and L Europe): 92.21%
• MrQ (independent): 96.22%

Mr Q gives the best value for your wagering with the maximum RTP setting. If RTP is important to you then we recommend that you play here.

Cursed Seas is a high variance slot from Hacksaw Gaming. This means the game can quickly swing from a long run of fruitless spins to a dizzying burst of high value payouts, typically in the free spins round. In that respect it is similar in style to games like Hand of Anubis and Gladiator Legends.

Maximum Win

The maximum payout in Cursed Seas is 12,500x. That puts it in the group of the Hacksaw slots with the highest maximum win, including RIP City, Hop n Pop and Wanted Dead or a Wild.

Symbols and Paytable

Cursed Seas is a 5-reel slot with 4 rows on each reel and 26 active paylines available on every spin. Wins are triggered by landing 3 or more identical symbols across the reels from left to right.

Typically for a Hacksaw Gaming slot the values in the paytable are not massive. Big wins are built largely off the back of the huge multipliers that are available in the two bonus rounds and building these is how you target top payouts.

Low value symbols are the iconic pirate symbols – anchor, star, tattered flag, crossed pistols and skull and crossbones. These can get you wins of 0.2x for 3 on a line up to 1.5x for 5 on a line. Premiums are the four pirate characters with values of 0.5x up to 10x.

In Cursed Seas the Wild substitutes for all other symbols to form wins AND pays out 50x for five on a line. There is also a Cursed Chest that does all that AND triggers its own feature that we explain under Gameplay.

Features and Gameplay

It will come as no surprise to fans of Hacksaw Gaming that Cursed Seas slot is all about unlocking and building multipliers to trigger big wins. There are several ways to do this.

Cursed Chests and Cursed Areas

First up is the Cursed Chest which can land on any reel at any time. Cursed Chest will create a Cursed Area above them on the reel they land on IF that area has a winning line running through it. The Cursed Chest also reveals a multiplier of up to 200x which is applied to any winline running through the Cursed Area.

It is possible to have more than one Cursed Chest active on a spin, in which case multipliers are added together before being applied to the winlines.

Two Bonus Rounds

Neon blue Lantern Scatters are required to trigger the two bonus rounds where it’s possible to score much bigger wins.

Sunken Treasure Bonus Round

Sunken Treasure, unlocked by landing THREE Lantern Scatters, is where things start getting interesting. You’ve got 10 spins where Cursed Chests ALWAYS open and create a Cursed Area. And now, Cursed Chest multipliers are added to a global multiplier at the top of the reels. This multiplier is applied to any win that runs through a Cursed Area.

You can also grow the Cursed Area by landing another Cursed Chest below the Cursed Area on a reel.

The round can be extended by landing 2, 3 or 4 more Lanterns to get 2, 4 or 6 more free spins.

Dead Men Tell No Tales Bonus Round

Sunken Treasure sounds good, but the highlight of Cursed Seas, if you can get that far, is definitely the Dead Men Tell No Tales Bonus. Fans of Hand of Anubis will recognise the style of this feature – keep building multipliers at the top of the reels for a (hopefully) big, big payout when you run out of spins.

Firstly, you need FOUR Lantern Scatters to trigger the round. Then you are taken to a new reel set with a multiplier displayed at the top of each reel. Two types of skull, a kraken, and empty spaces can now land with the following results:

Cursed Skulls show a multiplier (1x, 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, 100x, 150x, 200x, 250x, 500x) that is added to the multiplier value displayed at the top of the reel they land on AND create a Cursed Area from their own position upwards.

Tormented Skulls show a multiplier (2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x) that is multiplied by the value at the top of their reel.

Krakens show a multiplier (1x, 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, 100x, 150x, 200x, 250x, 500x) that is added to the multiplier values at the top of ALL reels.

You get 3 spins to start and every time at least one of these symbols land, the spins start at 3 again. When 3 consecutive spins with NO symbols occur, the round ends. Now, the multiplier values at the top of each reel are added to each position in each Cursed Area below, before they are all added together to create the total win.