The Golden Sail

Overview The Golden Sail slot

The Golden Sail is a collaboration between Relaxed Gaming and Silverback Gaming which offers a pirate themed five-reel, four-row and 40 pay line slot. The theme is incredibly well executed but the question must be, does this slot merit both your attention and money? I certainly think so as it goes far beyond the classic pay line gaming experience and offers a pick me game, free spins, feature buy, and a trail bonus and it would be fair to say that this is a typical pirate-based slot.

Theme & Symbols

The production of the theme is decent, and everything is exceptionally clean cut. With the symbols the low value paying symbols are the card ranks that start from 9 and go through to the Ace. The higher paying symbols are the treasure chest, compass's, rums, and the Pirates. The only way I feel the slot could have been improved would be to have spent a little more time on the design as the slot does lack some artistic input.

Game Play

When it comes to the gameplay the slot plays out over 5-reels, 4-rows, and has a total of 40 pay lines. The maximum win is 10,000 times your stake which is a treasure that is truly deserving of Pirates.
When it comes to the bet range it stands a lot higher than expected and players cannot play for any less than 0.40 Australian dollars which equates to a cent for each pay line and for the High Roller players there is a maximum wager of 40 Australian dollars. The volatility in this game is high and even though it is dangerous when you are out on the seas the hit rate stands at 30.5%, but this is something that you do not get that often in high volatility games with the pay-out average being one in every three to four spins.

The Golden Sails slot is available at Australian casinos and can be played on all devices which means that you can play whenever and wherever you are, all you require is a decent Internet connexion to play at mobile casinos.
The return to player is rather disappointing standing at an average of 95% however this does increase to 95.25% if you choose to use the feature buy. Whilst this may sound rough this is a super high variance slot and if you were to play this slot in a land-based casino the return to player would sit at less than 92%.

The pay-outs are as you would expect, and you need to land 3+ matching symbols on a pay line starting from left to right, the high pays a lot for full sets of symbols up to 10x your bet, whilst the wild pays out 12.5x your bet for a full set. The wild can also substitute for the other symbols to create winning combinations.

Features

There is a plethora of features available in The Golden Sail and if you land the special wheels symbol on your first, third, and fifth, reels this will activate the big wheel feature. You then get to spin the wheel for four different rewards, and there is also a 50x cash prize as the least with the other three options being even better.

The pick me bonus feature allows you to choose from 3 treasure chests and each has a coin win of at least 100x your bet with the most you can win standing at 5,000x your bet. The free spins feature will power 20x your bet as well as providing 10 free spins. The free spins come with a progressive win multiplier which increases by +1 for each additional free spin. If you land more scatters you will get two bonus free spins for each.

The trail bonus is about moving through a map and you will get better and better bet multipliers as you progress. If you get lucky you can win the jackpot of 10,000 times your bet.

Finally, that is the feature buy and this is available because it can be tough waiting for the scatters to land. Therefore, if you wish you can use the feature buy option and this will cost you 85x your stake, but it does guarantee you three scatters on the next spin.

Conclusion

The Golden Sail is a classic pirate themed slot that has both good and bad points. The games bonus rounds are all fun to have, and many rewards are available alongside the jackpot of 10,000 times your stake. One downside is the return to player, and this is because it is lower than 96% and the symbols are quite boring. However, I feel sure players can put up with this provided the game pays some big wins every now and again.

When I tested this slot, I bet an average of 200 Australian dollars per spin and selected the auto play function with two 100 spins which saw me playing for eight sessions. In the base game I received wins from $2.5 Australian dollars to $25 Australian dollars and there were plenty of small wins in this range although nothing too spectacular however, the hit frequency was spot on as I received a pay-out on every third spin.

I paid the feature buy once to check out the big wheel, the three scatters showed up and I received a 50x coin win. I then bought into the feature buy again and this time activated the trail bonus and got to play through the mini game.

The coins I received were 4, 6, 4, and 4, and this provided me with a cash prize of 75x my stake. Even though this slot has been tagged as a high variance game I did prove you can still win big when you play with a small bankroll and my advice would be not to bet over the top of your budget and let the reels do all the hard work for you.