Dead Mans Trail Slot Review

Dead Man's Trail Slot Overview

Dead Man's Trail is a pirate-themed slot from Relax Gaming that goes for a darker, moodier style than you usually see. Instead of bright tropical beaches, you get a misty harbour, rough seas, and a town full of shady figures. I liked how the intro sequence sets up that atmosphere straight away, then drops you onto a 5x4, 40 line grid packed with high-risk potential.

The headline attraction for me is the Trail Bonus, a tense board-game-style feature where a pawn walks around an island map collecting prizes and modifiers. Alongside that sits a simple Coin feature in the base game and an optional Bonus Buy in some regions. With a default RTP of 96.29% and a maximum win of 50,000 times your bet, this one can pay hard when it behaves.

Dead Man's Trail Slot Details

Dead Man's Trail uses a 5 reel, 4 row layout with 40 fixed paylines, paying for three or more matching symbols on adjacent reels from the left. Stakes start at 10p and run up to £20 a spin, which suits my bankroll tests quite well. The math model is very high volatility, rated 10 out of 10, with a hit frequency of 19.15% and a big 50,000x cap.

The standard RTP for Dead Man's Trail sits at 96.29%, which is decent for this style of game. In non-UK markets you can pay 100 times your stake to trigger the Trail Bonus instantly, and that pushes the theoretical return up to 98%. I usually stick to normal spins, but knowing the buy option runs hotter makes it tempting when the base game feels grindy.

Dead Man's Trail Theme, Audio + Symbols

Dead Man's Trail opens with a cinematic sequence of a battered ship fighting through stormy seas, and that sets up the tone nicely. The main game takes place in a grey, windswept harbour where wooden shacks creak and pirate flags hang in tatters. The soundtrack adds low, eerie notes and the occasional burst of cannon fire. It all feels a long way from the cartoon pirate slots many players are used to.

On the reels, the low paying symbols are J, Q, K and A, each worth up to three times your stake for five of a kind. The premium set features four pirate characters with blue, green, orange and red backgrounds. Land five of the top red pirate and you get 30 times your bet, while the others pay between five and 15 times. The artwork fits the gritty theme and helps the characters stand out.

The golden W wild symbol carries its own payout, giving two, 10 or 60 times your bet for three, four or five on a line, and it substitutes for all regular symbols. The pirate ship scatter is the key to the Trail Bonus, needing three or more in view. You also see special coin symbols that show bet multipliers; hit coins on at least three different reels and you collect the combined value.

Symbols and Paytable

Symbol	Quantity	Payout
	Wild
	5	x60
	4	x10
	3	x2
	5	x30
	4	x5
	3	x1
	5	x15
	4	x2.5
	3	x0.7
	5	x5
	4	x1.2
	3	x0.3
	5	x5
	4	x1.2
	3	x0.3
	5	x3
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.1
	5	x3
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.1
	5	x3
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.1
	5	x3
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.1
	Special
	Scatter

Bonus Features in Dead Man's Trail

The Coin feature in Dead Man's Trail keeps the base game from feeling completely dead. Coins can drop on any reel with a random bet multiplier attached. When I land coins on three or more separate reels in a single spin, the game totals every coin on screen and pays that amount straight away. It is a simple mechanic, but seeing a full screen of big coin values never gets old.

The real action comes from the Trail Bonus, triggered by three or more scatters. The slot clears the reels and shifts to a top-down view of an island path dotted with tiles. Each turn, a random number from one to nine moves your pawn along the trail. Normal tiles award cash values based on your bet, the Start tile triggers a reset, and landing on an End tile stops the feature and pays your total.

Some tiles hide Mystery Chests that trigger one of eleven modifiers, including Scouts that add 100 to 1,000 to a tile, Commanders that raise every tile, and One-Eyes that multiply values several times over. There are persistent versions that repeat every step, plus Collectors, Resets, Super Resets and Coin Wins. Each normal tile can climb to 10,000 times the bet, and the overall win cap is 50,000x, helped by the 100x Bonus Buy in some markets.

Dead Man's Trail Expert Verdict

From my sessions, Dead Man's Trail feels very much like a bonus-driven game. The base spins can be slow, with the odd Coin hit or wild line keeping the balance alive while you chase the Trail Bonus. When the feature lands, though, the tension ramps up fast as you edge past End tiles and hope for Mystery Chests. It can bust early, but when the modifiers line up it really gets the heart going.

I would recommend Dead Man's Trail to players who enjoy very high variance, animated bonus rounds, and a darker pirate theme. The 96.29% RTP in normal play is fair, the optional 98% buy setting is strong, and the 50,000x ceiling gives serious headroom for huge hits. For me, the mix of atmosphere, long-form trail play and brutal swings makes this one of Relax Gaming's most entertaining pirate efforts.

Screenshots