Release The Kraken 2

Theme and Design

Release The Kraken 2 takes you to the bottom of the ocean but it’s not down to the murky depths, rather into sun-dappled sandy sea beds with turquoise water, colourful coral and bubbling rock pools. And it makes sense. After all this Kraken doesn’t seem to be the worst kind of sea monster, and his cheeky friends look like their enjoying the show too. Meanwhile, in the background an epic sea-odyssey tune to keep us company. There is also a lot of nice animation on the reels when you land a win – snapping sharks and zapping electric eels.

Light-hearted and cheerful feel seems to be the chord Pragmatic are striking and they do it well.

RTP and Variance

Release the Kraken 2 has three possible RTP values: 96.5%, 95.5% or 94.5%. Most UK slot sites will run at one of the two lower values. We verified the RTP at four popular sites. This is what we found:

• MrQ (independent): 96.03%
• Casumo (independent): 96.03%
• BacanaPlay (Skill on Net): 93.98%
• Slot Nite (White Hat Gaming): 93.98%

For the best return on your wagering we therefore recommend you play at Casumo or MrQ.

This is also a very volatile slot – rated as a 5/5 by Pragmatic Play themselves. So expect a rough ride, but with all those multipliers potentially in play in the bonus round, there could be some epic win sequences on rare occasions.

Maximum Win

The maximum win in Release the Kraken 2 is 5,000x.  This is lower than the original game which offered 10,000x potential. However, it is not uncommon for high variance slots from Pragmatic Play to have wins capped at 5,000x. You can find a variety of games with similar maths model listed in the table below.

Symbols and Paytable

Release the Kraken 2 is a simple 5 reel slot with 4 rows and 20 active paylines. Interestingly, this increases to 40 paylines if you can unlock the bonus round, suggesting much of the payout power may be reserved for this event.

Landing wins is straight forward. It’s just three or more identical symbols across the paylines from left to right.

And it appears to be a generous slot.

Low value symbols are the cards, 10 through to Ace but even at the low end these still give you a 1x for 5 10s on a line. Whilst five Aces will get you a 2x payout. The premiums are sea creatures including a cheeky shark, a couple of weird-looking deep-sea fish, and a serpent. At the top end the shark pays out a big 10x for 5 on a line.

There is also the Kraken Wild, who both subs in to complete winlines and pays out 0.5x and 20x for between 3 and 5 on a line.

Features and Gameplay

Release the Kraken 2 rattles along at a fast pace. Despite its high variance there are enough features to keep things interesting even when the payouts aren’t landing your way.

When you start spinning look out for the Kraken Wilds. We never landed 3 or more in a payline but they did come in handy to complete lines with some of the high value symbols from the paytable.

But importantly, they also come as stacks in a feature called Shifting Stacked Wilds which is basically Nolimit City’s xNudges with a big octopus.

Before the Shifting Stacked Wild arrives you’ll know it’s coming as a warning flashes up on the screen. Then, after your spin you’ll see part or all of the stack showing. It nudges into place, and with each nudge it increases a win multiplier value by 1x. You can land up to 3 at a time on reels 2, 3 and 4. In this case their multipliers are added together before being applied to your win.  We landed two on reels 2 and 3 and earned a £13.57 win from 20p which you can see in this shot.

Once during our session we also encountered the Guaranteed Win feature. This only happens rarely on non-winning spins. The Kraken shuffles across your screen and re-arranges the symbols to form a win of 20x to 50x. It is apparently possible to get handed 3 scatters this way too to open up the free spins round.

Another feature that proved elusive was the Wild Re-Spins. You need to land four or more wilds on the reels on one spin to unlock this. In this case, each wild stays on the reels but moves to a new position before the re-spin. If more wilds land then another re-spin will take place. This continues until no more wilds land.

The quality of a Wild Re-Spins feature really depends on how many you get and how lucky you get with the re-spin. However, with at least four in play this has potential to drive some nice wins even in the base game.

The highlight of any session is likely to be the Free Spins round where you get 40 paylines, sticky wilds and a new Golden Wild which adds a 1x multiplier each time it lands.

This bonus has quite a complex triggering system that reads like something out of Deal or No Deal. The number of free spins and the value or your multiplier in the free spins round are determined by a special game in which you must pick boxes and accept or reject what is offered when they are opened.

The possible contents of the boxes depends on how many scatters landed to trigger the round. Here is what you can get:

• 3 scatters = between 4 and 15 free spins with a multiplier of up to 6x
• 4 scatters = between 5 and 20 free spins with a multiplier of up to 10x
• 5 scatters = between 6 and 20 free spins with a multiplier of up to 10x

You’ll have a choice of 16 boxes each containing one configuration of free spins and multipliers. Just like the gameshow, you must pick one box and then choose to accept or reject based on its contents. If you reject, some boxes are removed and you choose again. This process repeats until you choose a box.

In our case we chose to accept the first offer we had which proved to be a mistake as we only got 6 spins and a 1x multiplier! Even with 40 paylines this resulted in just a 96p win! Sometimes it pays to take a gamble! You can see the stages of the round in these screenshots.

Nevertheless it was a fun feature and the added a level of jeopardy and self-determination to an event that is normally at the mercy of the game engine.