Skulls Up Online Slot Machine – Free Play & Review

It’s a very colorful and fun-looking pirate-themed slot machine, with cartoon-style graphics in use inside. You have the usual tropical island behind the game’s reels, while on them the wooden symbols have either gold coins with Royals in them, or high symbols with parrots, monkeys, several pirates, treasure chests and skulls. Overall, excellent design, one of the things that Quickspin always seems to do well.

Developer

One of the many Swedish developers that have been doing a great job over the last decade or so, Quickspin was founded in 2011. Since 2016, Quickspin is a Playtech company.

Several of the fun games available from them are popular, and I’d mention here titles like Sticky Bandits, Big Bad Wolf or Eastern Emeralds (16,000x top prize).

How To Play It

Your chance to become a pirate will come in exchange for a small wager, of just $0.10, the minimum amount required to play Skulls Up. There are higher levels for the bet as well though, and the maximum amount possible will reach $100.

To start with, you get a slot with ways to win, 243 available on 5×3 reels. The game becomes more interesting along the way though, eventually being capable of showing as many as 1,944 ways to win. It can do this by doubling the number of symbols on some of the reels.

Special Features

A lot of the excitement that you can get in Skulls Up will be coming via its wild symbols. The Skull will have that role, in two variants, one regular and the other with flames. Both appear only on the middle three reels, and they are available to be used as substitutes and ways for you to get more wins formed.

It’s especially easy for them to help out, when used as substitutes next to regular symbols in a system with ways to win, rather than lines.

The Flaming Skull is the version of the wild that is a lot more fun though, since its appearance on the reels will signal the start of the Flaming Respins. The feature starts by adding one extra symbol, at the top of each reel that has a wild on it, either regular or flaming. This is possible only for the middle three reels, but those can get as many as 6 symbols.

During the respins which will follow, your aim is to form combinations with the Flaming Skulls that are present. This extinguishes their flame, and turns them into regular wilds. Once all Flaming Skull Wilds are turned into regular wilds, the Respin feature ends.

Another major feature that you can trigger is the one with the Flaming Free Spins, 8 rounds offered in exchange for three Treasure Chest scatters. These work in the same way as the respins, but the game area doesn’t reset if any respins trigger in this mode, plus you can get extra free spins.

Maximum Payouts

Quickspin implemented fairly high rewards, though they would’ve worked better if this was a medium volatility slot. As a slot with high volatility, having a jackpot of 3,650x the stake is not great, since the amount of risk you take doesn’t quite match the jackpot. Still, since the RTP is set to 96.26%, we know that the game is fair in the long run.

Summary

Skulls Up is a game that will please anyone that prefers a slot machine with pretty graphics, but it doesn’t neglect the gameplay either. You will find fun new features here, but at the same time the slot has high volatility, and the rewards aren’t as high as they should’ve been.