Rage of the Seas

Rage of the Seas is our slot of the month for September. Already featured in our new online slots section a couple of days ago, ROTS is the second NetEnt online slot to be given the SOTM treatment. OK, enough with the acronyms. What about the game?

Theme/Visuals

Unsurprisingly, Rage of the Seas boasts highly-polished visuals. This is Net Entertainment after all. The load up screen features a nicely animated Jolly Roger flag flapping in the breeze, while the game area is set against a well-designed pirate galleon complete with firing cannons. For the most part, ROTS’ soundtrack falls under the category of ‘incidental’, although the pace certainly picks up during the main bonus feature.

How to Play Rage of the Seas

The base game area comprises a 5 x 4 configuration and offers up to 1024 pay-lines. However, this can expand to a 4-7-7-7-4 layout thereby increasing the pay-lines to 5488. The reel symbols are decorated with four characters: a pirate captain, two female pirates and a bald bloke with knife in gob. The pirate captain is the most valuable paying out 2.5x your stake when five land across a pay-line. All other medium symbols pay out a maximum of 2x.

It is with suppressed excitement that we can announce that playing card icons are not included in Rage of the Seas. Instead, low value symbols are signified by a parrot, a hammer-head shark an anchor, a barrel of gunpowder, a ship’s wheel and a rum bottle wrapped in a net/rigging. An octopus serves as the wild symbol and the game’s logo represents the scatter.

Bonus Features

ROTS includes an assortment of bonus features. Absolutely central to the game is the boost feature. This is activated by landing crate symbols on reels two, three and four. A monkey then emerges, climbing up to unlock the window(s) above the reel(s) on which the boost symbols appear, thus adding three extra rows as well as 4 feature spins. If there are any additional boost symbols on an expanded reel, you’ll be rewarded with 2 extra spins.

Random Features

When the boost feature is unlocked, you’ll be rewarded with one of five random features:

• Spreading Wilds
• Stacked Wilds
• Major Reel Upgrade
• Minor Reel Upgrade
• Multiplier Feature

Spreading Wilds

Spreading Wilds are signified by the octopus and can land on reels 2, 3 and 4, converting adjacent symbols, save for those on reels 1 and 5.

Stacked Wilds

For the Stacked Wilds feature, the octopus will cover four reel positions and substitute all others apart from scatters and boost symbols.

Major/ Minor Reel Upgrades

During the major reel upgrade, all anchor and barrel symbols are removed from the grid, while for the minor reel upgrade, the rum bottle and ship wheel symbols are taken off the reels. This of course makes it possible to trigger bigger wins.

Multipliers

The multiplier feature multiplies all wins by two.

Free Spins Bonus Round

The free spins bonus round is activated by collecting three boost symbols during the base game or free spins feature, or by landing three scatters. For the latter method, you’ll be rewarded with 5, 8 or 12 spins depending on how many scatters appear. The free spins bonus round then plays out across a fully-expanded game area with three modifiers – any registered feature spins will also be added to the free spins tally.

Conclusion

As far as visuals go, Rages of the Seas is absolutely beautiful and truly comes alive during the bonus features. Given the high volatility of this game, expect to languish in the doldrums for extended periods. But the lavishly animated bonus features, not to mention the game’s big-win potential should go some way in compensating.

RTP: 96.04%, Minimum Stake: 0.20

Dale Shelabarger

Freelance Contributor, creating content since 2003

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