Boom Pirates is an ambitious slot, created by Foxium in conjunction with Microgaming. The game employs a patented Foxium mechanic called Wonderways, meaning that the number of potential winning combinations can vary between the thousands and the millions. The pirate theme is well-realised, with appropriate graphics and a swashbuckling soundtrack. The main character of the game is the pirate captain Mary, who swings into the reels to activate one of the special features. There’s a lot to unpack with this game, so stay with us for a thorough and unbiased Boom Pirates slot review.
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Boom Pirates Slot at A glance
- Developer: Foxium
- RTP: 96.19%
- Max win: 3800x
- Reels: 5-9
- Paylines: 1024 – 10077696
- Min/max stake: £0.30 – £150
- Volatility: High
Boom Pirates Main Features
Players join stylish pirate captain Mary, eye-patched explosives expert Ben, and the obligatory ship’s parrot in a dynamic game that should be full of surprises. The setting for Boom Pirates is a Caribbean port town, with the pirate ship bobbing on the waves just next to the docks.
Extras and ‘Foxify’ Feature
There are quite a few extras to be found in this game, including free spins and the expanding wilds. The Boom Pirates slot also gives players the chance to ‘Foxify’ the game, which means improving the chances of triggering bonus features by increasing the bet level.
Theme and Visuals
The symbols fit the theme, with the aforementioned characters, a barrel of rum, and a cannon. Rather disappointingly, the lower paying symbols are all simple cards with not much to make them look pirate-related. We would have liked to see a bit more imagination there.
Wonderways Mechanics in Boom Pirates
Clearly taking inspiration from Megaways, Foxium have created their own version called Wonderways. Boom Pirates, released in 2019, was the first slot to use this expanding reels mechanic, and it seems that there are now two such games in the collection. At the base game there are 1024 ways to win on a 5×4 layout, but the reels and winways expand when the cannonball feature randomly activates. As the cannons rain down on the reels, the number of ways to win keeps increasing. When fully expanded it is a 9×6 grid with over ten million possible winning combos.
Bet Levels
Bet levels are from thirty pence up to £150, but considering the volatility of this game large spin values are discouraged. Players can up their stake by 50% to ‘Foxify’ the game and increase the chances of triggering the cannonball feature.
Boom Pirates RTP and Variance
The Boom Pirates RTP is average, just over 96%, but it is the variance of this game that is worth mentioning. The slot variance, which is often called volatility, is listed as high – and they are not kidding. High volatility slots pay out less often, but the wins tend to be bigger when they eventually come around.
- During the testing of this game, the volatility seemed to be very high indeed. Many, many spins went by without any kind of win. For a game with so many winways, we find this to be a disappointment, but it’s true to the listed variance.
- For games like Boom Pirates, it is recommended to play for smaller stakes. As the wins come round so infrequently, larger bet levels can drain a bankroll very quickly. Of course it goes without saying that you should always play within your means.
Boom Pirates Special Symbols
Boom Pirates has ten paying symbols and one scatter symbol in the base game. The scatters trigger free spins, but other bonus features do not involve any symbols. The paytable is a little complicated, since there can be up to nine of each symbol on any one payline. The game developers have tried to simplify the payouts by making all the card symbols the same value. The following are minimum and maximum payouts for each symbol in GBP, for a spin value of £1. The gold Yo Ho Ho scatters must land on the first, third, and fifth reel for a round of ten free spins. There are no wilds or other bonus symbols in this slot.
Boom Pirates Symbol Paytable
| Symbol | 3x Payout | 9x Payout |
|---|---|---|
| Cards (10 – Ace) | 0.50 | 5.00 |
| Barrel | 0.60 | 7.50 |
| Cannon | 0.80 | 10.00 |
| Parrot | 1.00 | 15.00 |
| Ben | 1.20 | 20.00 |
| Captain Mary | 1.50 | 25.00 |
Boom Pirates Slot Bonuses
Despite a lack of bonus symbols, there are still a few special features to mention in Boom Pirates.
Mary’s Attack Bonus
First up we have Mary’s Swashbuckling Attack, a sort of mini-feature that occurs at random in the base game. On some of the losing spins, Mary swings out from the right-hand side of the screen, brandishing her cutlass. She strikes at the reels, changing five symbols to give a 5x symbol win – this of course varies in value depending on which symbol is revealed.
Boom Pirates Bonus
The second bonus feature is the one that the slot is named after. A cry of ‘Boom Pirates’ goes up from the ship to the side of the reels, and cannonballs are unleashed to rain down and blast open more winways. This feature only lasts for a single spin of the reels, however, so there’s just one chance to make a good win with more paylines.
Boom Pirates Free Spins
The most potentially lucrative feature is free spins. The gold scatter symbols land on the first, middle, and last reel, spelling out YO HO HO. When just one or two land, the pirates let out a little exclamation of disappointment. It’s a nice touch but it does underline how frustrating it is when that final HO symbol is missing. There are ten free spins in the round, and the Boom Pirates cannonball feature is more active as well, so this round is just about guaranteed to have a decent payout. Unfortunately it seems to trigger very seldomly, so players may be spinning a long time before it materialises.
Other Features
As previously mentioned, players can up the stake by 50% to make the cannonball feature trigger more frequently. There is also the chance to buy the free spins round for a considerably larger stake – 66x to be precise. This may be worth considering if your bankroll allows it, since the free spins are not easy to come by otherwise.
There’s a quick spin mode, where all the reels land at once instead of consecutively. Players can also choose autoplay, up to 100 spins at a time. There are no additional autoplay settings, such as win or loss limits, which is disappointing.
Bonus Buy Feature on Boom Pirates
Note that for players in the UK, it will not be possible to use the bonus buy option when playing at a casino site licensed by the UK Gambling Commission. This is because this feature was banned by the commission a few years ago since it was deemed to encourage excess gambling. For the UK market, Foxium and other casino software developers have had to remove any bonus buy mechanics from their games. Do not be tempted to bypass this by playing at an unlicensed gambling site.
Do the 1024 Ways to Win Affect the Gameplay?
Sadly, when researching for this Boom Pirates review, we came away rather underwhelmed. For a game that has 1024 winways in the base game alone, the number of actual wins was frustratingly low. We tested many different bet levels and in none of our sessions did we manage to turn a profit. The potential 10 million plus winways rarely all get activated, even with the ‘Foxify’ option in play, same goes for the free spins.
Boom Pirates on Mobile
Boom Pirates was released in 2019, and as a relatively new slot game it is compatible with all modern mobile devices. You can play Boom Pirates slot on any iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, and it is accessible via less common operating systems as well. In many ways, playing on mobile is a superior experience to using a PC or laptop, especially with the touchscreen operation. In order to avoid interruptions, ensure that your battery is fully charged and that you have a stable internet connection. Although most modern slots have a failsafe to prevent loss of winnings when a game is interrupted, it’s still not a situation that you want to be in.
Conclusions
We really wanted to love this game, but it has a few issues that are inescapable. It is a good looking slot, and like most Foxium games it has just the right balance on the soundtrack. The background music and effects are unobtrusive but add a lot of atmosphere to the game, and they do not suffer from being too irritating and repetitive like many casino game soundtracks.
This is a slot with a lot of potential, it has an inventive design and interesting game mechanic. The pirate theme is always a winner, and we like the characters and overall feel of the game. If the special features were a little easier to trigger, then this would definitely be one for the books. As it stands, it’s probably best to stick to playing this game just for fun at our recommended slots sites UK, either in demo mode or for the smallest available stakes.
