Inside Goldbeard you will find a game designed by RTG that has as a theme the life of pirates. Even better, Goldbeard is the one on which the slot focuses, a typical pirate captain that has a parrot on his shoulder, a sword in his hand, an eye patch on his right eye and a wooden leg. Add to that the fact that he’s standing on the beach of a tropical island and he’s preparing to bury some wooden chests with treasures inside, and you get the full pirate experience from this slot. Everything I’ve described is visible in the intro image that loads up first, but you also see many of these elements as symbols.
The game’s 20 lines are arranged on a 5 reel/3 row grid. The developers made sure that even though the theme in itself is cool, you also get enough features inside to help with the boredom that would eventually set in. That’s why you can find inside multipliers and free spins, while symbols give you both scatters and wilds. The progressive jackpot offered is not the main reason to play this game, as the $25,000 fixed prize is a better offer that the slot makes you.
Features of Goldbeard
The features available in Goldbeard are the classic ones, but the way the free games are triggered has been changed a bit, with roles reversed between the wild and the scatter in this case.
The scatter symbol, a gold coin with Goldbeard on it, will only award prizes in this slot machine. It will not trigger the free spins, which is something you might be used to from other titles. Getting as few as two scatter symbols in a random position during the same spin will mean you get to take a prize home. Depending on the exact number of scatter symbols, the prize varies between 1x and 100x the value of the total bet (up to $10,000 can be awarded).
The wild symbol (Goldbeard himself takes this role) has both some pros and some cons when it’s compared with similar features from other games. On one hand, you get a wild that can trigger free spins and has a 2x multiplier for combinations it helps form. On the other hand, it can only show up on 1st and 5th reels, while offering a small prize instead of the jackpots we are used to.
Free Games and Increased Multipliers
As I’ve mentioned above, Goldbeard is the wild symbol, but at the same time he is responsible for getting the free spins started. Whenever you get the wild on both the 1st and the 5th reels, the free spins start. The amount depends on the number of wilds and on the number of free spins they award you (2 to 4 free spins for each one). Since two reels have enough room for up to 6 wilds, you can get up to 24 free spins. The wins are all tripled for the duration of the free games.
Betting options and jackpots
Goldbeard is a typical game for RTG, at least as far as the betting options are concerned. Each one of the 20 lines can get 1 coin when they are activated, whose value is from $0.01 to $5. The $100 maximum wager possible in this slot will maximize both options.
Normally, the best possible combo you can get here has five pirate ship symbols and pays 2,500 coins ($12,500). It doubles the prize if a wild Goldbeard is part of the combo, plus there is always the chance of getting this combo during free spins, where an extra 3x multiplier is applied.
You will find the Random Jackpot amount in a display box located at the top of the reels. At the end of each spin, there is a chance that the prize will be given either to you or to one of the other players that are using this game.
Design and symbols
The cartoonish design style chosen for Goldbeard shouldn’t put you off. It’s nicely done, colorful, you can see the blue ocean behind its reels and overall it provides you with a good experience. The designers have even styled the letters of the playing cards to look fancy, like in the books that people would write by hand a few centuries ago.
Symbols: Goldbeard (wild, 2x), Gold Coin (scatter, 100x the bet value), Pirate Ship (2,500x), Parrot (1,000x), Cannon (500x), Treasure Chest (500x), Ace/King (200x), Queen/Jack (150x), 10/9 (100x).
Is It Worth Playing?
There are dozens of pirate themed slot machines out there, but I’d say that Goldbeard makes the cut and it should be on your list of titles to try out. It has all the features you could want, plus decent top prizes and nice graphics.
Goldbeard can be found at any RTG casino, where you get a chance to play it for real money or in free mode.
