Skulls UP!

Set sail for riches and join the pirates, parrots and playful monkeys on the slot from Quickspin. Skulls UP! will take you to a tropical island for a high-volatility reel ride with a variable game window with up six rows and up to 1,944 ways as well as Flaming Skull Respins and Free Spins features that can lead to wins of up to 3,650 times your bet.

Slot Details

Skulls UP! is a video slot with five reels, three rows and 243 ways to win in default mode. Courtesy of the respin feature, the grid can grow up to a 3-6-6-6-3 format with up to 1,944 ways. Wins are awarded for three to five matching symbols on adjacent reels from left to right only. You can embark on a pirate adventure on desktop or mobile from 0.10 to 100 credits per spin. The game has high volatility (4.5/5) with an RTP of 96.26%.

The design is all that you can imagine of a pirate-themed slot. A pristine beach somewhere in turquoise tropical waters with a moored boat is in the background of the game window with wooden blanks holding the pay symbols. A sail with skulls covers the inactive reel positions while a bunch of pirate misfits dominate on the reels together with their typical pets such as parrots and monkeys. The scenery changs to a night setting during the free spins. A Carribean soundtrack rounds of the slot design.

The pay symbols start at the low end with the card royals from 10 through A, awarding 1x to 4x your stake for a single five of a kind. They are followed by parrots, monkeys, a one-eyed pirate, a knife-wielding pirate and the female pirate captain. Hit five across the reels to win 5x to 20x your bet.

The game has two Skull wilds, both appearing on reels two to four only and substituting for all regular symbols (more details shortly). A treasure chest acts as the scatter.

Skulls UP! Slot Features

Pirate-themed slots are expected to highly volatile delivering cliffhanger sessions as we face the master of sea robbery, all garnered with some dramatic features to keep us on our toes. On Skulls UP! much of that task falls to the Skull Wilds which come in two types. The standard Skull Wild performs the usual duties on the reels and will also have a special role in the bonus round.

Only the Flaming Skull Wild will trigger the Skull UP! Respin feature if one or more land on the three centre reels in the base game and free spins. Before each respin, all new Flaming Skull Wild and Skull Wild symbols in view are launched to break open a new symbol position above the reel that they’ve landed on. They will move to the new position and stay sticky for the next respin. If there are no positions to open, they will stay where they are.

The process repeats until all six positions on a reel are uncovered and all three centre reels are opened. Scoring a win with a Flaming Skull Wild during a respin will see its fire go out, turning it into a regular Skull Wild and rolling off the screen with the standard symbols. The respins will continue as long as there are Flaming Skull Wilds left on the reels, after which the game window resets to the default 5×3 format. Wins are evaluated and paid after each respin.

Get ready for the reel treasure hunt when you hit three Chest scatters anywhere on reels two, three and four. The game will award 8 Flaming Free Spins which cannot be retriggered as such but more can be won during the gameplay. Any unlocked reel position on the triggering spin as well as newly uncovered positions will remain open for the duration of the bonus round. The reels can be opened up to the maximum the same ways as in the base game with the difference that the reels will not reset between the free spins and getting to the top of a reel will award +2 free spins. The maximum number of free spins per round comes in at 14.

Final Verdict

After releasing with Golden Glyph their first-ever grid slot, which proved highly popular in the casino community, Quickspin is following up with a completely different set-up that no doubt will thrill players as well. The expansion mechanic is well-know and used on a large range of games and provides time and gain suspenseful moments. We couldn’t find anything negative to say about Skulls UP! other than maybe the relatively low total win of 3,650 times the bet, which we would have expected to be a notch higher considering the game has near-maximum volatility.

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