CURSED TREASURE

HOW TO PLAY CURSED TREASURE

The base game is fairly standard as far as online slots go. It’s played on a 5×4 grid with 20 active paylines. This means that your goal is to hit 3 or more matching symbols along one of 20 paylines. All winning combinations start at the leftmost reel and go from left to right. In other words, it’s a classic configuration that most slot players are familiar with.

You can use the buttons below the reels to pick the size of your stake. Optionally, you can also turn on Quick Spins if you want the reels to spin faster. Then, simply click the big ‘Spin’ button to begin.

There are 10 regular symbols in the game – the card values are considered low-paying, while the characters and items are considered high-paying. You can find more info about their value in the Payouts section of this review.

Additionally, a few special symbols can appear both during the base game and the bonus round. These include:

• Wilds – standard slot wilds that can substitute any standard symbol
• Cash Symbols – Can appear randomly in the base game with a value ranging from 0.50x to 20x the bet. If you hit 3 or more along a payline, all Cash Prize symbols on the line are added together for a single prize. This follows the same rules as regular winning combinations, but with more variable results because of different possible symbol values. Each Cash Prize can only pay once, although a single symbol can still be part of multiple winning lines.

Cursed Treasure Feature

The eponymous Cursed Treasure feature consists of two basic parts. The first is the Cursed Treasure meter, which you can see at the bottom right. It starts at 5 and increases by +1 every time a Cursed Treasure symbol is collected.

Cursed Treasure symbols can appear anywhere on the reels in both the base game and the bonus round. They are collected into the meter no matter where they hit on the reels, effectively acting as Scatters in that regard.

Every time one of these special symbols is collected, there’s a chance for the Cursed Treasure slot feature to activate. This will randomly turn a number of symbols equal to the current Cursed Treasure meter into Cash Prize symbols. This almost always results in an instant Cash Prize payout as well, considering you’re likely to see at least 10 Cash Prize symbols created.

If the meter is less than 20 at the moment the feature activates, the Cash Prize symbols will have a value ranging from 0.5x to 5x the bet. If the collection is bigger than 20, the values will range between 0.5x and 20x.

Cursed Treasure Slot Free Spins

To activate free spins, you need to hit three Scatter symbols anywhere on the board.

The Cursed Treasure bonus round is called free spins, but it works more like a Hold & Win feature. This means that all regular symbols are removed from the game, and the board becomes a 5×4 grid of individual reels with one position each. They spin independently of each other and can result in either a blank space, a Cash Prize symbol, a Mystery Prize symbol, or a Cursed Treasure symbol.

You get 3 spins to begin with, and any symbols that hit stick to the board until the end of the bonus round. Every time you hit anything, the number of free spins resets back to 3. Conversely, if you spin 3 times in a row and get nothing but blank spaces, the round immediately ends.

Mystery Cash Prize symbols are simply Cash Prize symbols that can hold prizes ranging from 50x to 5,000x. They only appear during Free Spins and only reveal their value once the bonus round ends.

Lastly, we’ll also mention that you can trigger the bonus round at any time using Feature Buy. It costs 100x the bet.

Casino Bloke Best tips for Cursed Treasure Slot

• 1Using the option to Feature Buy increases the game’s RTP by a solid 0.11%.
• 2For most intents and purposes, Cash Prize symbols act as regular symbols in the base game. The only real difference is that each instance of the symbol can have a different value.

PAYOUTS & RTP

Low-paying symbols in Cursed Treasure slots look like typical card ranks ranging from 10 to Ace. All five are identical in terms of value, paying 0.5x, 1x, and 2x for combinations of 3, 4, or 5, respectively.

The map and book are sort of in the middle. Both are valued at 1x/2x/4x, which is the lowest among the “high-paying” symbols. The three characters have more variation, but they’re definitely the most valuable wins.

Generally, the game is not quite as volatile as we imagined when we started playing. The hit rate is quite respectable and regular wins generally end up paying for emselves. Of course, the Bonus Round is instrumental for getting to the Cursed Treasure maximum payout of 5,064x.

Cursed Treasure slot RTP is 95.99%, which is close enough to the global average of 96%. However, using the Buy Feature option in this game will bump up the RTP to 96.10%. It’s not a huge deal, but this means that Feature Buy is the statistically optimal way of playing the game.

CURSED TREASURE BY NETENT – CASINO BLOKE’S VERDICT

NetEnt has really ramped up the pace of releasing online slots in 2024. It seems new games are out every week, which seems like great news for fans of their work. However, it’s almost inevitable that some releases end up being less memorable than others.

The Cursed Treasure online slot seems like exactly one of these less-memorable games. Don’t get us wrong – it’s a solid all-round product. If you find yourself enjoying it, you’re definitely not wasting your time or money. However, there just doesn’t seem to be much going for it. The theme is fairly generic, and the features are solid but ultimately not very special or unique. Moreover, the games RTP seems to favour outright buying features. That’s not a problem, but strategically minded players could just end up playing a Hold & Win simulator.

Anyway, Cursed Treasure is far from the best NetEnt can do, but it’s certainly up to their high standards. We can’t give it a glowing recommendation, but we can at least say that it’s a safe, reliable option.