Release the Kraken
Release the Kraken Stats
RTP & Maths
- RTP Versions
- 96.50% here · Other versions 95.50%, 94.50%
Free Spins & Bonus
- Free Spins
- Bonus on reels 1 and 3 + Free Spins on reel 5 = pick chests for +1/+2/+3 spins, max 12 spins · Up to 12 spins · Retrigger: none - the feature cannot be retriggered
- Bonus Buy
- Free Spins 100x
- Multipliers
- 1x–10x · Add
Symbols & Pays
- Wild
- Base and feature · All reels
- Scatter Reels
- Bonus on reels 1 and 3; Free Spins or Chest Bonus on reel 5
- Line Pays
- Top symbol 25x · Lowest 0.25x
Release the Kraken opens its Roaming Kraken Free Spins with a chest pick, and the number of chests handed back sets the length of the round. Underneath that, something bigger changes. Standard play runs on 20 paylines, the free spins grid runs on 40, and every spin of the feature therefore reads across twice as many winning routes as the round that triggered it. Wilds stay where they land, take a new position on each spin, and step a multiplier upward for as long as the round lasts. The demo puts the whole game inside that one feature.
What’s in the Demo
Roaming Kraken Free Spins
BONUS lands on reels 1 and 3 with FREE SPINS on reel 5, and the round starts with a chest pick rather than a fixed award. Each chest reveals plus 1, plus 2, or plus 3 spins, and the picking continues until a COLLECT item appears. 12 spins is as far as the pick can reach. Once the round begins, the multiplier starts at 1x, and every wild that lands raises it by one step for all the spins that remain, climbing “up to a maximum of 10x” in the game’s own wording. The wilds themselves don’t leave. They stay on screen and move to a new position each spin, which is where the roaming in the name comes from. Special reels run for the duration, and the round cannot be retriggered, so whatever the chests handed over at the start is the whole feature.
The Three Tentacle Modifiers
On any spin in standard play, three tentacles can rise beside the reels and ask for a choice. One of them fires a modifier, and there are three the game can land on. Kraken Locking Wilds keeps the reels turning while a run of one-in-three chest picks awards More Wilds, Continue Spinning, All Wins x2 and Collect, More Wilds and Collect, or Collect, and the game pays every winning combination once the sequence ends.
Colossal Kraken Wilds waits for the reels to stop, then guarantees a 3×4 wild block somewhere on the grid. Infectious Kraken Wilds also arrives after the stop, guaranteeing at least one infectious wild in view that converts the symbols beside it into wilds as well. None of the three costs anything to enter, and none of them announces itself before the tentacles appear.
The Bubble Wild
The wild is a bubble, and it does two jobs at once. It substitutes for every symbol except the three bonus icons, and it carries a pay of its own that matches the Kraken logo at every step of the table. It reaches all five reels outside the features, which is why the modifiers that add wilds are the ones that change a spin most. Within Roaming Kraken Free Spins, it picks up a third job, because each new one raises the round multiplier as well.
Sunken Treasure Bonus
The second route out of the three bonus symbols swaps FREE SPINS on reel 5 for CHEST BONUS, and the game hands over a pick round instead of spins. Three chests hold random money prizes; a hit on one lets the picking continue, and a COLLECT ends it. There are no spins and no multiplier attached to this one. It is a straight sequence of cash awards that runs until it stops.
Buy Free Spins
A plaque to the left of the reels prices Roaming Kraken Free Spins at 100x, which comes to $200 at the demo’s $2.00 stake. Buying skips the trigger condition and drops you straight into the chest pick that decides the spin count. The Sunken Treasure Bonus and the tentacle modifiers are not for sale, so the buy covers one of the three features and leaves the other two to the reels.
How to Play
The line count is not fixed for the length of a session here. The demo has two separate grids: one for standard play and a denser one that appears only in Roaming Kraken Free Spins, and both are fully drawn out in the rules. Wins pay from left to right on adjacent reels starting at reel 1; no line pays twice because only its best combination counts, and the game runs every paying line into one total.
That last rule is what the second grid changes. A colossal wild block covers the same positions whichever mode it arrives in, but the feature grid reads more lines through those positions, so an identical picture on the reels returns a bigger number.
Gameplay Stakes, Volatility and RTP
Bets run from $0.20 to $240.00. There is no ante setting and no super-spin mode anywhere in the game, so that range is the whole range, and the top of it is reachable without changing how the reels behave. The theoretical return is 96.5%. Medium-High is the tier here, because the feature does nearly all the work, while the rules settle for Low. That gap is worth carrying into the paytable, because a low label usually promises a flat spread of values, and the top of this table is not flat. Nothing in the game moves the return either, so one setting is in play here, and one figure is attached to it.
What the Symbols Pay
Every figure below is a bet multiple, converted from the cash values the paytable shows at $2.00, and each one is a per-line award rather than a whole-screen total. The Kraken logo and the wild share the top of the table, paying the same at every step. Kraken’s Sky Bounty puts the same sea creatures on a different engine and pays them differently, so this table is the one to read before comparing the two. The royals fall away fast below the sea creatures, with Q and J worth a quarter of the bet for three.
| Symbol | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kraken logo | 2.5x | 10x | 25x |
| Bubble wild | 2.5x | 10x | 25x |
| Shark | 2x | 5x | 12.5x |
| Turtle | 2x | 4x | 10x |
| Blue fish | 1x | 3x | 7.5x |
| Green fish | 1x | 3x | 5x |
| A | 0.5x | 1x | 4x |
| K | 0.5x | 1x | 4x |
| Q | 0.25x | 0.5x | 2x |
| J | 0.25x | 0.5x | 2x |
The Bonus Symbols
BONUS, FREE SPINS, and CHEST BONUS carry no cash pay of their own, and none of them appears on the table above. BONUS has to land on reels 1 and 3 for anything to happen at all, and reel 5 then decides which round follows: the roaming wilds or the treasure picks. Two of the three positions filled does nothing. Three bonus symbols scattered across the wrong reels does nothing either. The trigger is a specific shape rather than a count, and that is unusual enough on a Pragmatic Play line game to catch anyone used to simply counting scatters.
Ultimate Slots Verdict
Release the Kraken hangs its value on one round, and that round is well built. The payline swap inside Roaming Kraken Free Spins changes the maths for as long as it lasts, roaming wilds keep stepping the multiplier higher, and the chest pick sets the length of the round before it starts. The volatility label undersells all of it.
✓ What We Like
- Roaming Kraken Free Spins runs on a second, denser line grid, so the feature pays across far more routes than standard play
- Wilds stay on screen through the round and every new one steps the win multiplier higher
- Three separate tentacle modifiers keep standard play from going quiet between triggers
✗ What Could Be Better
- Operator versions run at 95.50% and 94.50%, below the setting the demo uses
- The Sunken Treasure Bonus awards cash picks only, with no spins or multiplier behind it
- The buy plaque reaches the free spins alone, so the tentacle modifiers stay entirely random
Detailed Review
Our Take
A 3.5 rating, and the second line grid is what earns it. Doubling the pay structure for the length of a round is a real change to how the game reads, not a cosmetic one, and the price on the buy plaque says Pragmatic Play knows exactly what it built.
The artwork in this underwater slot does steady work rather than showy work. Chunky cartoon fish, a heavy blue palette, and a kraken that only fully arrives when the tentacles rise beside the reels. The three modifiers are the most animated thing outside the features, and they carry the game between triggers without ever pretending to be a feature round.
The volatility label is the part worth arguing with. A round that stacks wilds, keeps them on screen, and steps a multiplier upward is not a low-variance structure, and the buy price is the tell, because a triple-digit multiple of the stake is not what a studio charges for a round that pays steadily. The low label probably describes the frequency of small line wins outside the features, which is fair on its own terms but misleading as a summary of the game.
How it Compares
Release the Kraken 2 followed this one, and Kraken’s Sky Bounty carries the theme onto newer hardware, but the original still holds the clearest version of the idea. Pragmatic Play has released louder games and bigger numbers since; this is one of the tidier ones.
With no retrigger available, the round you trigger is the round you get, and the chest pick decides its length before a single reel turns. That makes the feature feel finite in a way most Pragmatic rounds don’t, and a run through the demo makes that shape obvious.
