Viking's Ransom

Join the Norse seafarers on the slot from Barcrest, powered by Scientific Gaming. Viking’s Ransom will see you sail the high seas with a berserker hoard out on their next plundering tour on a 6×4 reel set with wild substitutions, a Reel Link Bonus and a Berserker Wild Free Spins round with unlimited retriggers that can lead to wins of up to 200 times your bet on every single spin.

Slot Details

Viking’s Ransom is a video slot with six reels, four rows and 40 fixed pay lines. Wins are awarded for three to six matching symbols on a line from left to right only. You can sail with the Norse seafarers on desktop or mobile from 0.10 to 500 credits per spin. The game has medium volatility and two RTP settings. Any bets below two credits will be played with an RTP of 94%, while those above will benefit from a 96% RTP, which we at GMBLRS find abhorrent.

Opening a game from Barcrest is usually not something that will surprise or leave you in awe. Their visuals can be described as rudimentary at best and it looks like that has not changed dramatically on this creation. You have a rough sea on a thunderous day in the background of a simple game window that is dominated by Vikings. The question is only how did the female Viking warrior get her modern-day bikini since the tales of the feisty warriors go back centuries. Oh well, someone at Barcrest must have had a dream. A dramatic soundtrack tries very hard to keep things interesting and suspenseful.

The pay symbols can appear stacked at all times and start at the low end with the card suits – hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades – awarding across the board a mediocre 1x bet for a single six of a kind. They are followed by a set of medium-value symbols – horns, Thor’s hammer, Viking helmets and crossed axes. Hit six on a line to win 2x to 3x your stake. The premiums, if you can call them that, are the female and the male Viking warriors, yielding 4x and 5x your bet for six respectively. The Berserker is the wild symbol, performing the usual substitution duties while a Viking longship acts as the scatter on this slot.

Viking’s Ransom Slot Features

Thinking of Vikings from NetEnt, we were hoping to find a good alternative when we fired up this Barcrest creation. Colossal symbols and Berserker Wilds conveyed the roughness you expect from the wild Norse hordes and are usually a sign that the gameplay will be intense and the win potential up in the sky. But knowing Barcrest’s notoriously low line pays, we braced ourselves for disappointment and the test confirmed our suspicions. The maximum you can win in a single spin is a mediocre 200 times your bet if you manage to fill the screen with the top male Viking symbol. Not in the least worthy of the mighty warriors but there are a few features that could give you at least a lot of entertainment for your buck.

First up is the Reel Link Bonus, which can trigger randomly on any spin in the main game and free spins. Lightning will strike the reels and pair (speak link) two reels together, 1+2, 3+4 or 5+6. It can strike multiple times and create more than one linked reels in one spin, plus it can strike an already linked reel twice, creating a Mega Reel. On the link reels, you will see only 2×2 low-value and 2×4 premium/wild colossal symbols, providing the extra potential to score a multi-line win.

The action reaches its climax when you land three or more longship scatters in one spin. Three, four, five or six scatters will get you 8, 12, 15 and 20 Berserker Wild Free Spins respectively, which can be indefinitely retriggered. Mighty needed, I should add, as it will need quite a few spins to end the round with a sizeable win.

Any time a Berserker Wild lands on a free spin there is a chance it will create a random number of wilds for the current spin. If the Reel Link Bonus activates it can add Berserker Wilds as colossal symbols. That’s it, no multipliers or other modifiers are available in the feature.

Final Verdict

As we are used to seeing poor graphics on Barcrest slots, we’ll judge it mainly on the gameplay. While it does have some exciting parts, we cannot excuse or overlook the different RTP settings. Any low to medium roller will be basically shafted as a slot with just 94% is bound to take your money much faster than on an RTP of 96%. It is also the main reason why Barcrest games rarely get more than a 3-star rating on our site. Plus, the win potential on a single spin is atrociously low for a 40-liner. I guess, I won’t be joining the Viking hoard any time soon.l

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