Cats of the Caribbean

Cats of the Caribbean: Slot Overview

If people could be classed as dog or cat lovers, Snowborn Games must fall into the latter group. Once again, the Swedish software provider has used a clowder of cats to give a game a cute, fluffy, feline touch. The previous one was Cat Clans, a slot where clans of cats battled in the Scottish Highlands, for what wasn't made clear, the closest spot to the heater? This time, a quartet of kitties are hitting the high seas in a piratical adventure called Cats of the Caribbean, where features include free spins with guaranteed wilds and a Cats Pots Bonus.

Cats might have an aversion to water but not the ones in this tale, who have taken to the azure seas of the Caribbean in search of loot. This is why players find themselves on board a wooden ship, all rope rigging, a cannon, and a box of cannon balls in view. There is a long history of cats onboard boats, in part to help keep the rat population down, in part for crew morale. Take Peebles, for example, the ship's cat about the HMS Western Isles, an intelligent sort who would shake strangers' hands as they entered the wardroom. Or what about HMS Amethyst's cat Simon, who attained the rank of 'Able Seacat' and was buried with full Naval Honours. Such is the affection these furry little fuzzballs inspire.

Cute is certainly the angle Snowborn has gone for in Cats of the Caribbean, which has a very close Cat Clans feel. Snowborn Games undoubtedly has a strong visual team who are able to create colourful and rich games of high quality that are able to catch your attention and Cats of the Caribbean certainly is no exception. Like the four cats, the game comes with four RTP settings ranging from 86.89% to 96%, depending on the market. Volatility is high, and stakes can be set from 20 p/c up to $/€25 per spin.

Reels and paylines grow for free spins, but in the base game, 20 paylines angle their way across a 5-reel, 3-row grid. One task is to land winning combinations of three to five matching symbols on a payline, starting from the first reel onwards. For the low pay symbols, there are barrels, hooks, bottles, pistols, octopi, and parrots, paying 2-3 times the stake for a five of a kind win. Cats make up the high pays, where we meet Big Tabby, Captain Claw, Captain Catnip, and Captain Red, who are all worth 5 times the stake for five of a kind. Wilds are critical to Cats of the Caribbean as they are used extensively in most of the features. They are worth 10x the bet for a line of five and can substitute any normal paying symbol.

Cats of the Caribbean: Slot Features

As mentioned, wilds pop up all over the place in Cats of the Caribbean, appearing in the Wild Cannon extra and the three free spin bonus rounds. They don't show up in the Cats Pot Bonus, though, which four cash prizes can be won.

Wild Cannon

The Wild Cannon can trigger randomly on any base game spin. When it does activate, 2-15 wild symbols are blasted onto the reels in any position. If a wild is placed on top of a wild, it becomes a wild multiplier, increasing by +1 for each additional wild added to it.

Free Spins

Free spins are triggered when free spins scatter symbols land on reels 1, 3, and 5. There are three types of free spin rounds, determined by the scatter landing on reel 5. Landing the red, green, or purple scatter on the fifth reel triggers Captain Red Free Spins, Captain Catnip Free Spins, or Captain Claw Free Spins, respectively. Here's what you get:

• Captain Red Free Spins – 15 free spins with 90 guaranteed wilds.
• Captain Catnip Free Spins – 12 free spins with 40 guaranteed wilds.
• Captain Claw Free Spins – 10 free spins with 25 guaranteed wilds.

For free spins, an extra row is added to the grid, and paylines increase to 30. Throughout the feature, the cannon blasts wild symbols onto the reels in random positions. If wilds land on wilds, they get multipliers, as in the Wild Cannon feature, up to a maximum of x5.

Cats Pot Bonus

Landing 3 Cats Pots symbols on reels 2, 3 and 4 grants one spin on a wheel of fortune. Here you will win one of four local jackpot prizes. This could be the Mini, Midi, Major, or Mega, worth 20x, 50x, 500x or 10,000x the bet, respectively.

Buy Free Spins

If you are able and willing, it is possible to buy either the Captain Catnip Free Spins for 55x the bet or Captain Red Free Spins for the cost of 200x the bet.

Cats of the Caribbean: Slot Verdict

Pirates are popular in slots, as are domesticated animals, so it makes sense to mash the two together and see what sort of pranks they'd get up to. Snowborn did a good job with Cat Clans, so we had optimistic expectations of what might wash up in Cats of the Caribbean. For the most part, Cats of the Caribbean was a positive experience. It's hard to hate on kitties with names like Captain Catnip and Big Tabby, so the cats live up to their end of the bargain, helping to make a slot as adorable as Cat Clans was but simpler on the gaming side of things.

Much simpler, really, as for much of the time, Cats of the Caribbean boiled down to slinging wilds at the grid and seeing what would happen. This is technically possible in the base game when the Wild Cannon starts blasting, then even more regularly so in free spins. Increasing the reels is a bit of a double-edged sword as, yes, there are extra ways to win and all, but also a larger pitch to shoot wilds at. If the reels had stayed 3 rows high, would it have resulted in more wilds doubling up, thereby creating more multiplier wilds? We can only wonder, and there were times when wilds did pile up on the screen, and single spin wins maxed out at around 90-100x the bet during the test sessions. Symbol values aren't massive for this sort of reel/payline set-up, so there is a suspicion it will be hard to make major ground without winning the top Cats Pot 10k prize, which is incidentally the game's max win figure as well.

All in all, Cats of the Caribbean was a cute game to play through. It does one or two interesting things with wilds and wild multipliers, though it's not as innovative as Snowborn's previous cat game was. However, anyone keen on moggies dressed up as pirates might be thrilled by the opportunity to do a spot of potential plundering alongside them.