Sharks! Slot Review

Pragmatic Play loves copying its own homework. Sharks! dropped in September 2026 alongside a bunch of other releases, and if you get major déjà vu playing it, there's a good reason. It's an exact, 1-to-1 clone of their game Cult, which came out just six months ago. Same math, same betting options, same reel strips. They literally just slapped a coat of underwater paint on it and called it a day.

Visually, it's a fun, cartoony underwater setup. You've got a shipwreck on one side, a treasure chest on the other, and a bunch of goofy sharks as your premium symbols (including a hammerhead and a shark wearing glasses). The low-paying symbols are your standard sea critters, a grumpy pufferfish, a starfish, a seahorse, and a jellyfish. The Wild is a yellow shark, scatters are pink shells, and the all-important multiplier is a gold shark coin.

For the stat nerds: it's a 5x4 grid with 25 fixed paylines. It's highly volatile, with an RTP hovering right around 96.5% (even if you buy the bonus features). You can bet anywhere from 0.25 to 250 a spin, chasing a 10,000x max win.

Here's the catch with how this game actually plays: the line pays are modest on their own, and every low symbol pays less than the stake until you land five of it. You need the multiplier coins, which range from 2x up to 100x. They add up into a global multiplier that boosts your win for that spin.

But here is the most frustrating (and thrilling) part of the game: a multiplier coin does nothing if you don't hit a winning combination somewhere on the board. The coin doesn't have to be on the winning line itself, but if the board is dead, that shiny 100x coin just vanishes. It's brutal.

If you want to spice up the base game, you have two options. For 5x your bet, you can turn on an Ante bet for a 13 times higher chance of hitting free spins. Or, if you're feeling wild, you can pay 10x your bet per spin for "Super Spins," which guarantees a multiplier coin drops every time (though this disables the free spins feature entirely).

Hit three scatters, and you get 10 free spins where your total multiplier never resets.

You can also just buy the bonus for 100x your bet, or go all-in on the "Super Free Spins" for 500x your bet, which drops coins way more often. (There's also a quick re-buy button at the end of the round if you want to immediately run it back).

I tested the buys out myself. I bought a 100x round and got absolutely crushed, making back about 20% of my money because a massive 100x coin landed on a dead board and paid me zero. Ouch. But then I tried the 500x Super Buy and nearly doubled my money. I kept hitting tiny, cheap wins alongside the coins, which built my persistent multiplier up to a massive 102x.

Look, if you played Cult, you've already played Sharks!. Pragmatic loves this "dead spin kills the multiplier" mechanic, you've seen it in Kingdom of Atlantis and Freya 1000, and it's the ultimate volatility lever.

The premium shark symbols don't even matter. This entire game is about building a giant multiplier and praying that any cheap line, even three grumpy pufferfish, lands beside it to cash it in. The highs are incredible, but watching a 100x coin go to waste on a dead spin inside the bonus will make you want to throw your phone.