Pirate Coins: 3 Chests

Somewhere past the skull rock, beyond the reach of anyone who files tax returns, a pirate ship sits low in the water under the weight of everything its crew has lifted. Pirate Coins: 3 Chests hands the whole operation to a parrot in a tricorn hat, sets him loose on a 3×3 grid barely wide enough to swing a cutlass, and parks three treasure chests above the reels where they catch whatever the coins throw at them. Evoplay has been refining this style of collector for a while now, and the pirate costume suits it better than most of the dressing the studio has tried.

Underneath the hat sits a tight little machine running five fixed paylines, an RTP of 96.03% and a ceiling of 10,000x the stake. The best regular symbol pays 50x for three of a kind, which sounds respectable until the Bonus Game starts dropping single coins worth more than that on their own. Almost everything of value in this game lives inside the feature, so ordinary spins spend their time funding the wait rather than paying for it.

What keeps that wait bearable is that no two bonus rounds arrive carrying the same equipment. Purple, red and green coins each fire a shot into the chest of their matching colour as they land, and whichever colours make up the combination that opens the feature decide which boosters travel into it with you. A round running one booster and a round running all three behave so differently that they could reasonably belong to separate games.

Pirate Luck Turns a Dead Spin Into a Trigger

Most collectors leave you to wait out the cold stretches on your own. Pirate Coins: 3 Chests keeps a thumb on the scale instead, through a rescue mechanic that the provider sheet never mentions and that only becomes obvious once you have watched it fire. Any purple, red or green Coin or Jolly Coin that lands on a spin producing no winning combination carries a chance of waking it up.

When Pirate Luck triggers, the game stops behaving like a slot for a moment. The screen bursts open around the coloured symbol already on the grid, coins pour across the reels from off-screen, and they keep arriving until enough of them are in position to force the Bonus Game open. The sequence runs on its own terms rather than resolving into another spin:

1. A coloured Coin or Jolly Coin lands on a spin that pays nothing
2. The feature activates at random, with no visible build-up on earlier spins
3. Extra Coin and Jolly Coin symbols drop into random positions across the grid
4. Enough of them arrive to complete a valid trigger, and the Bonus Game starts immediately

The effect on how the game feels is larger than the mechanic looks on paper. A dead spin carrying one lonely purple Coin stops being a dead spin, because the thing that would normally mean nothing is now the exact condition Pirate Luck needs. It turns the most common disappointment in the base game into the only route that can rescue itself.

Inside the Bonus Game, Where Three Spins Never Stay Three

The Bonus Game opens with three spins on the counter, which reads like a punishment until the reset rule arrives. Everything about the round is built to keep that number from reaching zero, and the result is a feature whose advertised length bears almost no relation to how long it actually runs. The loop itself is short enough to learn in one sitting.

1. Every coloured Coin and Jolly Coin from the triggering spin turns gold and keeps the value it was already displaying
2. The standard reels slide away, replaced by special strips carrying nothing but gold Coins, gold Jolly Coins and empty spaces
3. Jolly Coins lock onto reel two and stay there until the round finishes, however many spins that takes
4. On each spin, every Jolly Coin collects the value of every Coin sitting on reels one and three
5. Collected Coins vanish and leave their positions open for whatever lands next
6. Any new Coin or Jolly Coin arriving pushes the spin counter straight back to three
7. Once the counter finally empties, the totals held on every Jolly Coin drop into the win

Step six is the one that matters. A round sitting on its last spin can be dragged back to full by a single Coin landing in a corner, and that reprieve can happen repeatedly within the same round. The counter stops working as a countdown and starts working as a tension meter, which is a far more entertaining job for it.

Multiple Jolly Coins collect at the same time rather than taking turns, so a middle column carrying three or four of them multiplies the rate at which the board empties into the totals. Rounds that filled reel two early climbed steeply and kept climbing. Rounds where the Jolly Coins arrived late ended before they could do much with what was around them.

The stake is fixed for the duration at whatever triggered the round, so raising the bet once the good part starts is off the table. Coins carrying jackpot values behave like any other Coin here, which means the Grand sitting on reel three still needs a Jolly Coin in position to turn it into money.

What the Regular Symbols Actually Pay

Wins form from the leftmost reel rightwards across five fixed paylines, and only the highest win on each line counts. With three reels on the grid, every combination in the game is a three of a kind, which keeps the paytable mercifully short. Each figure below multiplies your total bet rather than a line bet, so the numbers read exactly as they land.

The parrot at the top of that list is the Wild, so the best-paying symbol in the game doubles as the one standing in for everything else. Fifty times the stake sets expectations about as low as a paytable can, and the three icons beneath it carry the theme honestly enough without ever threatening to pay for the round that follows. Royals fill most of the grid most of the time and cluster at 1x and 2x, which leaves them as something for the reels to do between coins.

The five paylines run as the three horizontal rows plus both diagonals, and that fixed count never changes. On a grid this small the lines overlap heavily, so a well-placed symbol can sit on three of them at once and a single spin occasionally pays across more than one line.

Where the Wild Will and Will Not Help

The parrot substitutes for every regular symbol to complete a line, and it pays 50x on its own account when three of them land together. It pointedly refuses to stand in for Coin and Jolly Coin symbols, so no quantity of Wilds will ever manufacture a trigger, and the feature stays locked behind the coins themselves.

It also disappears entirely once the Bonus Game starts, since those reels carry nothing but gold Coins, gold Jolly Coins and empty spaces. Its whole career therefore plays out in the main game, much of it spent completing royal combinations worth a fraction of a spin. Every so often it lands somewhere useful and turns an ordinary board into the best result of a long session.

RTP, Hit Rate and What the Buy Buttons Cost

Pirate Coins: 3 Chests returns 96.03%, which sits close enough to the middle of the modern range to be unremarkable. The figure that actually explains a session is the hit frequency of 16.95%, so roughly one spin in six pays something back. Almost all of those payments are royal combinations worth 1x or 2x the stake, which is why the balance drifts downward in small steady increments rather than falling off a cliff.

Evoplay publishes how often the larger results arrive, and the spacing between them widens quickly:

• Big Win, around once in 74 spins
• Super Win, around once in 123 spins
• Mega Win, around once in 316 spins
• Epic Win, around once in 848 spins

The Bonus Game averages one appearance every 95 spins, and that number governs the rhythm of the whole game. Long quiet stretches are the normal state here, broken by a round that returns a meaningful share of what the stretch cost. Pirate Luck shortens some of those waits by forcing triggers out of losing spins, though it arrives on its own schedule and cannot be relied on.

Buying in costs 49x the total bet for a round with one to three random boosters, or 93x for all three guaranteed. The cheaper option carries genuine variance, since it can roll the full set for just over half the price or deliver a single booster and a short round. The expensive one buys consistency rather than a higher ceiling, because all three boosters make rounds busier without lifting the 10,000x maximum.

Stakes run from 0.10 to 75.00, and the ceiling of 10,000x the total bet translates to 750,000 at the top of that range. The main game alone caps out at 60x, which places every result of any real size inside the feature and leaves the base game as a holding pattern by design.

Listening to a Round Play Out

The audio runs on two separate beds rather than one looping track, and the switch between them is the clearest signal that the game has changed mode. Main-game play sits under something light and nautical that keeps out of the way across long stretches, while the Bonus Game swaps in a faster arrangement with more percussion underneath it. The change lands before any text appears on screen.

What makes the mix worth paying attention to is how much room sits reserved for events rather than atmosphere. Each stage of a coin’s life carries its own cue, crisp enough to separate from the reel stop underneath, so a round can be followed by ear alone:

• Coins landing. A weighted metallic drop that cuts through the music and distinguishes a Coin from any ordinary symbol stopping beside it.
• Chests loading. The projectile a coloured coin fires upward arrives with its own short flight and impact, so a filling chest registers without looking away from the reels.
• Pirate Luck firing. The loudest and least expected noise in the main game, a burst that interrupts the music entirely before the coin shower starts.
• The collection sweep. Values flying from the outer reels into a Jolly Coin run as a rising counter, with a settle sound as each total updates on the collector’s face.
• The counter reset. A short sting marks the moment a new coin pushes the spins back to three, which is the cue most responsible for the feature’s tension.
• Win tiers. Separate stingers for each band of result, so the size of a round registers before the number finishes counting up.

None of it is subtle, and subtlety was clearly never the brief for a game fronted by a parrot in a hat. The layering stays easy to follow across a long session, which matters more here than it would elsewhere, because the base game asks for patience and a grating loop would make that patience considerably harder to find.

Where Evoplay Sits Right Now

Evoplay has spent the last few years moving away from straightforward video slots and toward games built around a mechanic of their own. The studio ships at a brisk pace across video slots, instant games and table titles, and its catalogue leans on bonus buy options and named features rather than reskinned classics.

Collector formats have become the most reliable territory in that catalogue, and Pirate Coins: 3 Chests takes the familiar shape and ties the modifiers directly to the colours sitting on the triggering spin. The feature therefore arrives already shaped rather than scaling up a single template, which is a harder trick than bolting on another multiplier and one the studio has been circling for several releases.

Is Pirate Coins: 3 Chests Worth the Hunt?

The booster system is the best idea in the game and it deserves copying. Tying the modifiers to the colours sitting in the triggering combination means every round arrives already shaped, which turns the moment of a trigger from simple relief into something worth reading carefully. Extra Row carries the most weight of the three, because a fourth collector on reel two changes the arithmetic of a round rather than decorating it.

Pirate Luck is the other genuine success, and it solves a problem most collectors leave alone. Handing the base game’s most common disappointment a second function gives dead spins a reason to exist, and the burst that follows is the most dramatic thing the game produces outside the feature itself. Rounds also run far longer than their three-spin headline implies, so the pacing holds up across repeated visits instead of wearing thin.

Against that sits a main game with very little in it. A premium symbol capping at 50x across five paylines leaves ordinary spins funding the wait and nothing else, and a hit frequency of 16.95% means even that funding arrives slowly. The jackpot ladder sharpens the frustration rather than easing it, since a Super or Grand Coin still needs a collector opposite it and often never finds one before the spins run out.

The 10,000x ceiling is generous by current standards and the feature is strong enough to justify chasing, though the two buy prices are not equally sensible. Paying 49x can roll a single booster and return half the purchase on a plain 3×3 grid, while 93x reliably delivers the version of the game actually worth seeing. Players who intend to buy at all should budget for the expensive button.

• Collector regulars who want the familiar locking loop attached to a trigger rule they have not met before
• Bonus buy players, since effectively all the value in the game sits behind the chests
• Anyone with patience for a near miss, because jackpot coins landing on a board with no collector opposite them is a recurring event rather than an accident
• Players who like a short grid, as three reels and five lines keep every spin readable at a glance

Anyone hoping to sit through the base game on its own merits will find the hunt long and the beach quiet.