Release the Kraken Slot Review

Released in January 2020, this game can be played at online casinos such as Unibet, Rizk or Casumo.

Theme and general information

We’ve seen underwater themes and we’ve seen the Kraken featured in slots before. It’s a theme that can be hit or miss. But Pragmatic Play, who often give us awfully generic slots, manages to hit the mark with this game.

The underwater world we find ourselves in is surprisingly bright and very colourful. It’s pretty and we like it. This is certainly one of Pragmatic Play’s more sophisticated slots. We sure would like to see more this as it shows us what the developer is actually capable of.

There is a bit of a tune playing in the background when we spin the reels, otherwise it’s just a bit of bubbling and perhaps the sound of whales in the distances. It suits the theme quite well.

On the reels, we find generic playing card symbols from J to A, several fish and a turtle, which all remind us of Finding Nemo characters (especially that cute little turtle).

The Release the Kraken game logo is the most valuable symbol on the reels, paying 25x our stake for 5 on a payline. The grinning shark is worth 12.5x our stake for such a win. The turtle still pays 10x our stake for 5 of it and the two fishes are worth 5x and 7.5x our stake, respectively.

You can play this game from 0.20 to 100.00 per spin.

Random Kraken Wilds in the base game

On any base game spin, the Kraken tentacles may appear before the reels, waving ‘pick me’ signs around. You then pick one of them and get one of the following features:

• Colossal Kraken Wilds: A giant 3×4 Kraken wild spins along on the reels and lands fully or partially to give us a win.
• Infectious Kraken Wilds: The reels spin and at least one Infectious Kraken wild is added to the reels, where it spreads to adjacent reels.
• Kraken Lockin Wilds: At the beginning of this feature, the reels keep spinning and we get randomly awarded 1 out of 3 chests with the following options: More Wilds, Continue Spinning (adds nothing further), All Wins x2 and Collect, More Wilds and Collect or just Collect.

These features tend to show up often enough to keep things interesting.

Sunken Treasure and Roaming Kraken Free Spins

We get two bonus games beyond that, which are triggered by 2 bonus scatters landing on reels 1 and 3 and a special trigger (for Chest Bonus or Free Spins) landing on reel 5.

Sunken Treasure Bonus: We get to pick among three chests that the Kraken guards. If we get a coin prize, we get to keep picking. The feature ends when we pick the ‘collect’ chest.

Roaming Kraken Free Spins: When we trigger the free spin feature, we get to see a bunch of treasure chests before us, which we pick our way through to collect +1, +2 or +3 spins. When we find the ‘collect’ in one of the chests, the accumulated free spins are played out. During the free spins we play with 40 paylines. And any wild that lands on the reels will increase the multiplier by 1x (we start at 1x). Also, all wilds now remain on the reels but wander around on every spin.

It’s not possible to retrigger the free spins.

Verdict: A good-looking slot with plenty of features that may not keep its promise

The theoretical RTP (Return to Player) for Release the Kraken is 96.5%, which is very good, though this is also a highly volatile game. The potential top payout sits at 10,000x our stake, which is excellent for a Pragmatic Play slot.

This is indeed one of the better slots the developer has released, and it shows us what they are capable of in terms of design and gameplay. There’s lots going on in this game and it doesn’t actually get boring. But does it manage to captivate us enough? Only if some of the potential pays out. We haven’t really seen any massive wins in this game, even though the potential is supposed to be there. We did see some decent wins here and there, but overall it didn’t feel as if the game held its promise. It was nevertheless entertaining, just not mind-blowing.