Skull Duggery Pokie
Pirates have long been a popular topic for online pokies to be based around and Skull Duggery, from Microgaming, takes the theme and adds some traditional images of fruit to it.
Set out across 5 reels and with just 9 paylines, Skull Duggery plays out against a fairly plain backdrop of a ships decking, with colourful payline indicators to each side and a set of control buttons beneath the reels. The simple style goes with the simple gameplay, where we see wild and scatter wins plus a quick bonus game as the only added features.
Let’s Play Pirates
Players can spin the reels with bets of just 0.01 if they want to, although this means that just a single playline will be activated, so to qualify for all winning combinations that land on them, it’s a minimum stake of 0.09 which can be adjusted up to a maximum of 90.00 per spin.
The amount that they can win is outlined on the paytable, with the various types of fruit being the lower values symbols. At the bottom, we see a coconut which is worth 2x the line bet when 3 of them land on an active line across adjacent reels running from the left side, while getting 4 in a line pays 5x and a full line of 5 equals a 50x win.
Progressively more is won with the banana, peach and grapes, with the orange being the top valued fruit, worth 8x, 40x or 200x the stake per line when 3, 4 or 5 land in the right places. Other symbols are more directly related to the piratey theme, with a sloshing tankard of beer, treasure map, complete with a dagger on the X, and a red-bearded pirate completing the line-up. He’s worth 10x when just 2 land on a line, while getting a full set of 5 pirate symbols across the reels is worth 750x.
Skull Duggery
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Extra Treasures, Me Hearties
There’s a few extra bits to break up the run of play, with a green skull acting as a scatter symbol that pays multiples of the total bet when it lands in any 2 or more spots. If 2 appear, players win 2x their stake and should the maximum of 5 turn up at once, they get 200x.
The wild symbol is simply the Skull Duggery title and pays 2x the line bet with just a single example, while a full line of 5 is worth the jackpot of 12,000x. It will also act as any of the fruit symbols if it can complete a winning combination by doing so, while the value of those wins will be tripled.
The only real bonus round is triggered by a symbol of a pirate creeping around at night with a treasure chest on his back. This guy needs to land in 3, 4 or 5 spots and he will take players to the deck of the ship where we see 5 pirates lined up. Players simply pick a pirate and he gets thrown off the ship while a multiplier prize is revealed, although the potential amount won depends on how many bonus symbols triggered the round.
Landing 3 bonus symbols is worth between 40 and 750x the coin value, 4 of them will pay between 100 and 1500x, while 5 will reward players with anything from 200x to 3000x. While it’s a nice enough bonus game, it’s also the only one, as there’s none of the usual free spins or secondary rounds that Microgaming pokies are generally known for.
It Walk The Plank?
Skull Duggery is a fairly average game that doesn’t actually do anything wrong, but isn’t exactly packed with design flair and exciting features. From the style of the symbols, to the background image of a plain bit of decking, the whole game looks a little rushed in development, like they put it together on a Friday afternoon before going to the pub.
But it’s perfectly adequate and many people will appreciate the simple gameplay that only get occasionally interrupted by a bonus feature starting. It’s a shame that the wild symbol only substitutes for the fruit and while tripling the value of each win is all very nice, maybe having it substitute for the higher value ones as well and just doubling the value would have been better.