Game provider Thunderkick creates a bunch of great slots, often boasting unusual, unique, and innovative features that make them especially interesting to review. The developer’s Shifting Seas video slot continues that tradition with a non-standard reel setup consisting of two columns of four symbols, two more columns of three, and a final two columns of two. The game uses the adjacent pay ways system when awarding wins and has 117,649 paylines. The maximum win is 15,000x your bet, whilst the RTP is casino-selectable up to 96.15%.
The base game of Shifting Seas online slot has another unusual feature – whenever a winning combination lands, the reel on the right edge of the screen will disappear, and a new, larger reel will be added on the left-hand side. This means that the more consecutive wins you hit, the larger the grid will grow, and the easier it should be to continue hitting further wins. There are several modifiers as well as a main free spins bonus round as well.
Thunderkick is one of the most consistent online slots developers, and their games are often incredibly fun, even when you are playing for fun. If you fancy trying this one for yourself, our free demo slot of Shifting Seas is below.
| Provider | Thunderkick |
| Reels | 6 |
| Rows | 4 |
| Paylines | 117,649 |
| Bonus Rounds | 1 |
| Bet Range | 0.10 - 100 |
| Volatility | High |
| Max Win | 15,000x |
| Bonus Buy | No |
| RTP | 96.15% |
| Our Rating | 8.0 |
Shifting Seas Slot Casino Bonuses
Shifting Seas Demo Slot
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Shifting Seas Slot Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols
Pirates, the sea, and the beach are all popular online slot themes, and Shifting Seas takes all three and blends them together to create a great looking, if somewhat ambiguous, theme. I can’t imagine that the theme of this game alone will attract too many players – it feels pretty random, and there is little explanation of who or what the characters and objects featured on the symbols are intended to represent. I know that storylines appear in very few online slot machines, but this is one title where I can’t help but think a little additional information on what is going on would make the game feel more enjoyable.
As for the paytable, it’s difficult to get an idea of whether the numbers shown are good or bad because of how winnings are awarded. The Shifting Seas slot game uses pay ways, but unlike most games that utilise this payout mechanic, this one requires that symbols appear on adjacent rows for a win to be awarded. A diagram of this is shown on the paytable, making it easy to visualise a winning pay way, but calculating how many are active each time a new and larger reel is added to the stack was far too tedious for me.
The top symbol is a treasure chest with a return of 5x your stake for six-of-a-kind. This is followed by the pirate queen at just 1.8x for all six, another female pirate at 1.4x, and then a deckhand at 1.3x. The last of the “high-paying” symbols is a parrot which pays 1.2x your bet for six-of-a-kind; my intuition says that these are all meagre numbers, especially for a game with only two spots on the last reel at the beginning of each spin. Still, I wanted to keep an open mind for now.
Wager selection is typically Thunderkick – the developer always tries to accommodate the biggest high rollers and the lowest low rollers. They stick to that philosophy here by offering a minimum bet of €0.10 per spin and a maximum bet of €100.00.
Base Game & Modifiers
You can’t help but be intrigued by the unusual layout of the base game in Shifting Seas. The layout is larger on the left-hand side of the screen at four reels high and gets progressively smaller until it is only two reels high on the right-hand side. To hit a win, you need to land matching symbols from left to right on adjacent rows, which will trigger an “avalanche” where the winning combination is removed, and new symbols drop in from the top. We’ve seen this feature in many games – nothing unique so far – but things are about to get much more interesting.
Shift Win
Every time you hit a win, it will cause a “Boost Shift” where the rightmost reel will disappear, and a new reel will appear on the left-hand side of the screen. The new reels added on the left will continue to grow in size until they reach the maximum height of seven symbols, after which new columns will remain at seven high.
Special Modifiers
If a special wild feature symbol is pushed out of the game area when a reel disappears from the right-hand side of the screen, it will trigger its corresponding special wild modifier:
- Wild Surge Modifier: One to three symbols will be selected randomly on the screen before being transformed into wild symbols.
- Symbol Rush Modifier: Four to eight symbols will be selected from any reel before all of them are transformed into new, identical symbols.
- Boost Shift Modifier: This modifier causes the new reel added on the leftmost side of the screen to be a duplicate of the reel that was previously in that position. The left side of the reel set will now contain two cloned reels, making it much easier for you to hit at least a three-of-a-kind win on the subsequent avalanche.
Shifting Seas Slot Free Spins Feature
Just as the special wild modifiers are triggered by pushing their corresponding symbol off the screen’s right edge, the same triggering mechanism is used for the bonus game in Shifting Seas online slot. A bonus game consists of eight free spins but can also be extended by another four free spins if another bonus symbol is pushed off the edge of the screen during the bonus game.
Wild Reel Feature
During the bonus game, a new wild reel feature can randomly appear either on the first reel or, after a shift win, on any reel. The wild reel feature will move one position to the right after each win, following the movement of the reels. If a shift win pushes the wild reel off the edge of the screen, your current multiplier will be increased by 1x, and you will also have one free spin added to your remaining counter.
Shifting Seas Slot Review Final Thoughts
I would describe myself as a fan of Thunderkick’s work, so I’m pleased to say that Shifting Seas is another fun game from this successful software house. The theme is a little bit mixed up, but how many of us genuinely choose our favourite slots because of the theme? The numbers on the paytable looked disappointing at first glance, but after playing the game for a while, I soon found that it was more about the modifiers and the bonus game than just looking at the numbers. Overall, this is another win for Thunderkick – go give it a try!
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