Up on Deck
The setting of this slot machine is on the deck of the ship, the wind in your hair and rushing against your faces. It all sounds mightily impressive, but the graphics sadly don’t capture that intensity, mainly because of how dated they are. We’re not entirely sure when this title was first released, but what we can speculate from the aesthetic is that it’s not recent.
You can come to this conclusion by looking at the blocky nature of the characters seen in shot, as well as the slight blurring of minute details, most commonly seen in none HD games. It isn’t a huge issue, for the slot still looks good enough to play, but it certainly makes it feel less enticing than other titles.
Oh My Captain
In terms of features, there are only two: the wild and the scatter, the former of which is the black haired captain of Ahoy Matey himself. Wilds usually just substitute other symbols to create more valuable winning lines, which is a nice touch but not much in terms of variance. In this example, not only does the tile do that but it also introduces a feature called 2-Way Play.
What this means is that when you create a successful combination, you’ll be paid from left to right and from right to left, essentially doubling your earnings. This will only last 10 rounds, but that gives you more than enough time to cash in some credits. The extra will only happen once you get three or more wild symbols, but in the grand scheme of things that isn’t too steep a feat.
Fraternisation
On this ship fraternising isn’t frown upon, in fact it’s needed, at least that’s what the paytable tells us. According to the information given, the scatters won’t trigger the 10 free games without three scatters appearing inside the 2-Way Play Feature. We’d like to be able to confirm or deny this, but the volatility worked against us and so we never got to play the bonus for ourselves.
What we do know however, is that there’s multiple levels to the free spins; players start at Level 1 and then work their way through to Level 3. Again, this is one of those vague instances for us, as we didn’t see this in action for ourselves, and thus we can’t comment with assured certainty of how easy these levels are to work through. Still, at least you know that the extra spins aren’t a cut and dry (and boring) example of the standard feature.
Pirate Code
If you’ve savoured the 15 winlines of this slot and want to keep on playing pirate themed titles, you’re in luck as this is one of the most popular themes available. Not only are pirates seen as dangerous, but they’re also epically cool. The thing is, with so much choice, how do you know which slot machine to choose next…?
We’d recommend Blackbeard’s Gold, from Amaya Gaming. It looks more polished and on a higher visual level than Ahoy Matey, but essentially you have a similar array of features. As always, seeing as both are from different brands, there’ll be notable contrasts in the paytables, but not so much that you’ll feel stranded out at sea.
Weigh Anchor!
When it comes to rating Ahoy Matey, we’d be able to comfortably give it a three and a half stars, most of which is down to its looks. It’s sad to admit, but the graphics are far too dated to make this an immersive experience. Nonetheless, while it may not look that hot, it plays fluidly and delivers a low to medium variance for users to appreciate.
