Kraken’s Cove: Slot Overview

Over time, software provider Relax Gaming has made it pretty clear it has a soft spot for ocean themes, judging by slots such as Cowabunga Dream Drop, Lure of Fortune, and Shark Wash. Once again, the call of the deep proves irresistible, with Relax Gaming heading back to the waves to create Kraken’s Cove, a pirate slot built on the foundations of the studio’s 2022 release Plunderland.

In the intro, the enormous Kraken bursting up from the sea somehow comes across as both oddly adorable and genuinely menacing. Once the main game appears, though, charm takes over: tidy little symbols arranged on a grid, small islands scattered around the edges, and bright, clear blue water. It brings to mind the bonus-round scenery from Dead Man’s Trail, only sunnier and more welcoming. Still, the skeleton lounging in an armchair and the sharks circling below add a faint but noticeable sense of danger.

Sitting on the water’s surface is Kraken’s Cove’s 7×7 gaming grid, featuring a special hot spot marked right at the centre of the play area. It’s a cluster pays slot, forming wins when 5 or more matching pay symbols connect horizontally or vertically. Winning symbols explode off the board, and new symbols then fall into the empty spaces. The game runs on a medium-high volatile math model and delivers a default RTP of 96.1%. Kraken’s Cove also includes a new upgraded feature buy alongside the standard option, plus a bet range of 10 c to $/€100.

Low-value symbols are the card suits—clubs, diamonds, spades, and hearts—while the higher-value icons include a ship’s wheel, a bottle of Kraken Juice, a hat, and a pirate. A cluster of 5 matching symbols pays 0.1 to 0.5 times the bet, rising to 70x to 500x for a 32-of-a-kind cluster. Wild chest symbols serve a couple of purposes in Kraken’s Cove. One of their roles is to substitute for all regular symbols when calculating wins.

Kraken’s Cove: Slot Features

In Kraken’s Cove, the core ideas revolve around collecting, expanding, and moving across the grid. To see how it all fits together, we’ll look at the Ship Wild Expansion Collection, the Ship Wild, free spins, the free spins gamble, and feature buys.

Ship Wild Expansion Collection

Wild chest symbols appear on the reels carrying 1 to 5 coins. These coins are collected, and every 5 coins collected increases the size of the Ship Wild will when it reaches the hot spot. In the base game, coins are only collected when there is a win on the reels. During free spins, coins are always collected, whether a win happens or not.

Ship Wild

The 1×1 Ship Wild shows up on every spin, and it moves 1 step nearer to the hot spot in the middle of the grid whenever a win occurs, whether it contributes to that win or not. Once the Ship Wild reaches the hot spot, it expands to 2×2, 3×3, 4×4, or 5×5, depending on the progress made in the Wild Expansion Collection. After it expands and produces a win, the Ship Wild is removed and replaced on the reels in a random position. The Ship Wild can reach the hot spot multiple times within the same game round, increasing the size it can expand to while retaining the multiplier it has built. The Ship Wild carries a multiplier that increases each time it takes part in a win.

Free Spins

Players receive 5 free spins when 3 scatter symbols are collected in a game round. In the free spins feature, both the Ship Wild Expansion and the Ship Wild’s multiplier are persistent. The Ship Wild multiplier increases by +1 each time it is involved in a cluster win and stays active for the entire round.

Free Spins Gamble

When free spins are triggered, players can gamble before the round begins for a greater number of free spins, up to 20, and/or an improved starting Ship’s Wild multiplier value, up to 50. Winning a gamble advances players to the next highest level. Losing a gamble drop players to the next lowest value. If no lower value exists, play returns to the base game.

Feature Buy

Using the feature buy, players can purchase free spins for 50x the bet or upgraded free spins for 250x the bet. Upgraded free spins begin from a stronger starting level.

Kraken’s Cove: Slot Verdict

Much like Plunderland before it, Kraken’s Cove has a knack for keeping you perched on the edge of your seat, waiting for the next swing of fortune. When things are flowing, it feels like a proper mini-adventure as the Wild Ship charts a course from its spot on the grid toward the central hot spot. Adding to the suspense is the Ship Wild Expansion collection, where coins gathered from wild symbols boost the potential Ship Wild size if it manages to reach the hot spot. These elements combined to create seriously entertaining chains of events (when everything aligned) in Plunderland, and they deliver the same kind of payoff again in Kraken’s Cove.

It also brings in a few extra touches, including the reworked Ship Wild expansion approach. Another is the option to gamble at the start of a free spins round, which is hard to ignore. The idea of beginning the Ship Wild’s multiplier at x50—or even x10—is pretty enticing, as is the chance to add more free spins, since 5 isn’t many. In fact, it’s one fewer than players received in Plunderland. If the base game can already feel intense, free spins amplify that tension dramatically. Watching the Wild Ship with a strong multiplier as it heads toward the hot spot while a hefty Expansion is banked can be genuinely nerve-racking.

Even with plenty of movement and action, the base game can be stingy when it comes to real cash returns, but with wins up to 10,000x theoretically on the table, Kraken’s Cove can still land big payouts when everything clicks. Beyond the mild surprise of seeing Relax Gaming revisit Plunderland, Kraken’s Cove is, like its predecessor, a gripping slot capable of serving up generous portions of fist-pumping excitement and head-in-hands frustration.