Midnight Yacht: roll the pearl dice with a puffin at the helm

The captain winks from the poster with a golden die held up like a trophy: a puffin in a navy coat, red neckerchief and anchor buttons. In the game she does exactly that job. You press Roll, five pearl dice tumble into the tray, and she keeps the ones that make the best hand before rolling the rest once more. The Midnight Yacht demo lets you watch that routine as often as you like with virtual credits, no download and no sign-up.

Faces, hands and the captain’s hold

Each die carries six nautical emblems: compass rose, anchor, helm, sextant, shell and pearl. Every face is equally likely. After the first roll the captain decides which dice to keep, always aiming for the strongest hand, and re-rolls the others a single time. Your final five dice are then read against a ladder on the side of the screen.

The paying hands start at Grand Tour, five different emblems, and climb through Full House, Four of a Kind and Yacht (five of the same) to the Royal Yacht, which means five compass roses. Pairs, two pairs and three of a kind are shown, but they do not pay. Because the hold is automatic, there is no strategy to get wrong; your choices are the stake, the speed and whether to buy the bonus.

The Golden Die and Polaris stars

Now and then a sixth die, the Golden Die, joins the second roll. It lands on ×2, ×3, ×5 or ×10, multiplying whatever hand you finish with, or on a Polaris star. Stars light up the Night Chart, and they are remembered between rounds for each bet size, so changing your stake starts a different chart. Collect three and the Midnight Cruise begins.

The Midnight Cruise

The Cruise is seven free rounds, one per harbour, with harbour multipliers of ×1, ×1, ×2, ×2, ×3, ×5 and ×10. Two things change. Compass roses stay anchored once they land, so a Royal Yacht becomes more reachable as the voyage goes on, and the Golden Die rolls every single time. A Royal Yacht lifts the anchors again. The top prize of 5,000× the bet comes from a Royal Yacht in the last harbour with the Golden Die on ×10. If you would rather not wait for three stars, the Cruise can be bought for 65× the bet.

Testing it in free play

Set a small stake, say the equivalent of 20p, and let thirty or forty rolls go by on Turbo. Watch how often the Golden Die appears and how the Night Chart fills. Then buy the Cruise a few times with demo credits and note how much of the total comes from the late harbours: it gives you a far better sense of the game than a single lucky run. Autoplay has an option to stop when the Cruise starts, which is handy if you want to watch every harbour. On a keyboard, the space bar rolls.

Midnight Yacht is a Nocturn Play title and works on mobile and desktop alike. Each round is settled the moment you bet; the dice simply show it. When you are ready, the same game runs for real money at the casinos below.