Deadliest Catch Slot by Playtech

Photographs of real Bering Sea crab captains stare out from the top of the reels, weathered and bearded under their caps and foul-weather hoods. Sig Hansen, Wild Bill, Keith Colburn and Johnathan Hillstrand all show up, lifted straight from Discovery's long-running TV series. That licence, and those faces, are most of the reason you'd pick this over any other money-collect slot. Behind them the grey sea heaves under a bruised sky, a crab boat rolling somewhere in the distance, everything bolted into a riveted steel housing.

One Collect symbol landing anywhere sets off King Crab Spins, the hold-and-win round the base game mostly exists to reach. Red king-crab coins carry cash values, and a ship's compass pays one of four mystery prizes, either a cash amount or one of the Mega, Major, Minor or Mini jackpots stamped on its rose plaque. Every Collect on the board sweeps up the value of all the crab coins and compasses showing. Then it compounds: on each respin every Collect boat expands vertically and multiplies what it gathers by 2x, 3x or 5x, and each new Collect that drops adds more respins. The round keeps going until the last boat to land stretches all the way across to the far side of the reels.

The Wild has its own bit of theatre. As the reels turn the F/V Northwestern can steam in and drop a buoy above one or more reels, and a full stacked Wild then lands wherever the buoy floats. It covers everything except the Collect, crab and compass symbols. An optional Extra Bet doubles your chance of triggering King Crab Spins, which tells you where the money is, since those four fixed jackpots only ever land from inside that feature.

For all the storm and the famous faces, the base game is a fairly ordinary money-collect setup, and the ceiling sits at 5,080x the bet. That's a modest top prize for a slot that runs this hot.