3 Cursed Chests: Hold & Win (Hacksaw Gaming) Slot Review

3 Cursed Chests: Hold & Win: Slot Overview

Three separate mini-bonuses, each locked behind its own chest, each playing by completely different rules — that’s the hook here. Hacksaw Gaming released this one in May 2026, and it’s a pirate-themed Hold & Win entry built around the legend of Anne Bonny, one of history’s most notorious female pirates. The setting is The Red Revenge, her real historical ship, and the grid sits over a treasure map on an uncharted island where souls are traded for riches. That’s a stronger narrative premise than most of the genre gets.

What separates this from the standard three-pot format is that each chest runs its own isolated bonus. No mixing, no combining modifiers mid-spin. Green gives you Wilds. Red gives you Coins. Blue pushes you toward Free Spins. That separation makes the game feel more structured than chaotic, which is both a strength and a mild limitation. If you’re a fan of Hacksaw Gaming‘s more aggressive releases — the ones with huge ceilings and stacking mechanics — this isn’t that. This is medium volatility, 2,500x max win, and a flow designed for players who like consistent action over lottery-style swings.

Design and Graphics

Hacksaw Gaming pushes a visually loud style here, and it works. Anne Bonny stands beside the reels with an enormous pistol, her character design detailed and confident. She’s not decorative — she anchors the theme and gives it personality. The ship’s ghost crew appears during the Ghostly Gallows free spins, and that visual shift genuinely changes the mood of the bonus round.

3 Cursed Chests Hold & Win slot – base game

The playing grid is laid over a treasure map, a simple but effective touch that reinforces the hunt narrative without being gimmicky. Color coding runs through everything — green, red, and blue chests sit prominently above the reels, and the pot scatter symbols on the grid match their colors exactly. That clarity matters. You always know what you’re chasing and which chest you’re charging.

Low-paying symbols are gem shapes corresponding to playing card suits. They’re clean but forgettable. The premium symbols do more work — mugs of ale, bottles with notes, compasses, parrots, and Anne Bonny herself all look sharp and belong to the theme. Hacksaw even drops a poem on the paytable, which is the kind of small detail that tells you someone cared about the experience beyond just the math.

The audio fits. Pirate-era ambience during the base game gives way to something more tense during bonuses. It holds up longer than most slot soundtracks. Come back two days later and it still isn’t grating.

Gameplay Mechanics

A 5×3 grid with 17 fixed paylines runs the base game. You need matching symbols from left to right across those lines, nothing unusual there. Low-paying gems pay 1.2x for five of a kind. Premium symbols pay 4x to 8x for five of a kind, with Anne Bonny at the top. Wilds, when they appear, also pay 8x for five in a line — but they only show up during the Green Chest bonus, not in the base game itself.

Wilds are absent from standard spins. There are no base game modifiers to speak of. That makes the regular spin loop lean and somewhat plain. You’re essentially watching for the three colored Pot Scatter Symbols to land and charge their corresponding chests. When a Pot symbol hits, it feeds the chest above it. Once charged, there’s a chance — not a guarantee in base play — that the chest activates at the end of the spin. Only one chest fires per spin, which keeps things orderly but also means multi-feature spin combinations don’t happen.

For players who need the base game to carry weight on its own, this doesn’t deliver that. Every interesting moment routes through the chests. That’s a deliberate design choice, and it keeps focus sharp, but the regular spin-to-spin experience is thin without a bonus trigger.

Mobile play runs without issue. Controls are clean, autoplay and turbo options behave as expected, and the layout scales properly across screen sizes.

Bonus Features

Each chest runs a completely different bonus structure. That’s the genuine innovation here — three divergent mini-games rather than one pooled modifier system.

Green Chest — Cursed Wilds Respin: You get one respin where Wilds and Wild Multipliers scatter across the grid. Multiplier values run from 2x to 100x, and when multiple multipliers contribute to the same win, they add together rather than multiply each other. This can produce a strong single-spin hit, and the randomness of placement keeps it interesting.

Red Chest — Cursed Coins Bonus: A classic Hold & Win round on a dedicated grid of blanks and sticky Coin symbols. You start with 3 spins. Each new Coin that lands resets the counter back to 3. Coin values span 0.2x to 1,000x the bet. When spins run out or all positions fill, the round ends and you collect everything. This is the most frequently triggering chest, and it’s also the most straightforward — just coins stacking up, nothing else. No special symbols, no escalating mechanics. Clean, dry, functional.

3 Cursed Chests Hold & Win slot – cursed coins respins

Blue Chest — Cursed FS Respin: One spin with only blank symbols and FS Scatter variants on the reels. Land 7 or more FS Scatter Symbols to unlock Treasure Cove Free Spins. Land 6 or more FS Scatters plus 1 FS Upgrade Symbol to unlock Ghostly Gallows Free Spins instead. The number of free spins awarded scales with the number of triggering symbols, ranging from 7 to 15 spins. This chest doesn’t pay out directly — it’s a gateway, not a reward in itself.

3 Cursed Chests Hold & Win slot – free spins

Treasure Cove Free Spins: Base game rules apply, with one key upgrade. Every third Pot Symbol of the same color guarantees its corresponding chest activates. Chests can still trigger before the third pot lands, at which point the count resets. Cursed Coins triggers count as one free spin. Landing FS Symbols during a Cursed FS Respin inside this mode awards additional free spins. A landing FS Upgrade mid-bonus escalates the round to Ghostly Gallows, carrying all remaining and awarded spins over.

Ghostly Gallows Free Spins: Follows the same structure as Treasure Cove, but every single Pot Symbol that lands immediately activates its chest on that spin rather than requiring three. That’s a meaningful upgrade — chest triggers become constant rather than periodic, and bonus frequency inside the round jumps sharply.

Betting Options and Payouts

Minimum bet sits at €0.10 and maximum at €400, which gives both casual players and serious bankrolls room to operate. At 96.3% RTP, this slots above average for the genre — most Hold & Win games come in closer to 95% or below, so that’s a genuine positive.

3 Cursed Chests Hold & Win slot – bonus buy

Medium volatility means you’re not sitting through long dry spells waiting for a single massive hit. Wins come with reasonable frequency, and the three-chest structure means different bonus types cycle in at a pace that keeps sessions from feeling static. That said, the 2,500x maximum win is a hard ceiling that will turn off anyone chasing four- or five-figure multiplier potential. Players who normally gravitate toward slots like dead or alive 2 or fire in the hole will look at that cap and walk straight past this one.

For mid-stakes players who want balanced sessions over explosive variance, the math model makes sense. The Feature Buy options are reasonably priced at the low end — the 3x Cursed FS FeatureSpins is barely noticeable as an additional cost per spin. The 200x Ghostly Gallows direct buy is a significant investment that only makes sense if you’re specifically hunting the best version of the bonus.

Conclusion

Hacksaw Gaming took a format that half the industry is using right now — the three-pot mechanic — and made one meaningful change: each chest runs its own isolated bonus type instead of pooling modifiers together. That’s not a revolution, but it’s a genuine design decision that changes how the game actually plays. Anne Bonny is a strong thematic anchor, the visuals are sharp, and the Ghostly Gallows escalation inside free spins adds genuine momentum when things go well.

The weaknesses are real, though. Base game spins without a chest trigger are hollow — no base wilds, no modifiers, nothing happening beyond watching for pot symbols. The 2,500x ceiling is low for a Hacksaw Gaming product. Players expecting the kind of ceiling their bigger titles carry will leave disappointed. The Red Chest Coins bonus, which triggers most often, is deliberately stripped-down — no special symbols, no escalating mechanics, just coins stacking. Some players will appreciate that simplicity. Others will find it dry.

This is a slot built for casual players and people new to Hold & Win formats. The structure is easy to read, the bonus variety keeps sessions from feeling repetitive, and the 96.3% RTP with medium volatility makes bankroll management predictable. High-variance hunters should look elsewhere — something like san quentin or chaos crew 2 will serve them better. Players can test the slot risk-free using the built-in demo available on this page. If Hold & Win with a pirate coat and a sensible math model sounds like your session, this delivers exactly that.