Gunpowder: Slot Overview

Boom! Gunpowder has been making an impact since the 9th century, after its invention in China during the Tang dynasty. Counted among China’s ‘Four Great Inventions’ (alongside paper making, printing, and the compass), it played a major role in extending power worldwide, for both attack and defence. Developer Peter & Sons taps into that explosive theme for its slot, Gunpowder, a naval warfare title featuring sticky wilds and wild-spreading mechanics, with some wilds carrying multipliers.

Sea battles of the past—packed with noise, casualties, and destruction—must have been terrifying, not to mention the sunburn and scurvy sailors endured between clashes. Thankfully, in Gunpowder, Peter & Sons leans on its distinctive, charming art style to make the experience as visually friendly as ship-blasting can be. The perspective is top-down, similar to a strategy game like Age of Empires, showing a coastal settlement, wrecked vessels, and open water. A see-through grid overlays the scene, and the premium symbols are a fleet of adorable little ships.

Gunpowder is a highly volatile online slot running on 10 paylines across a 5-reel, 3-row layout. Stakes range from 10 c to $/€50 per spin, and the game includes both a Golden Bet and a bonus buy. Turning on the Golden Bet increases the stake by 50%, boosting the likelihood of sticky wilds in the base game and also improving the odds of triggering free spins. The default RTP shown in Gunpowder’s info panel is 96.2%.

Peter & Sons goes with a wooden, hand-crafted look for the 10-A card royals as the lower-paying symbols, while the higher pays are formed by assembling 5 wooden ships. A 5-of-a-kind line of low pays returns 2.5 to 5 times the bet, and a 5-of-a-kind line of high pays delivers 10 to 20 times the bet. Wilds in Gunpowder are known as sticky wilds, and they replace any standard paying symbol to help form winning lines.

Gunpowder: Slot Features

Gunpowder doesn’t try to overwhelm players with a long list of intricate mechanics; instead, it focuses on respins, a random Phantom Power add-on, free spins where wilds stay locked in place, and a bonus buy for skipping straight to the main event.

Phantom Power

Phantom Power triggers randomly. When a wild appears on the reels in the base game, it initiates a respin during which the wild becomes sticky. The wild can then fight nearby high-pay symbols. If the wild wins, the destroyed ship turns into a wild, and another respin is granted. During free spins, wilds may come with an x2 or x3 multiplier.

Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols in the base game awards 10, 12, or 15 free spins, respectively. In the free spins round, wilds are sticky, meaning they remain in their position on the reels for the remainder of the bonus round. If a wild is present on every reel, players receive +5 additional free spins. Thanks to Phantom Power, sticky wilds can create other sticky wilds by winning their battles against high-pay symbols.

Bonus Buy

Players can trigger the free spins feature directly from the base game for 170x the bet. When the feature is purchased, 7 to 12 free spins are granted.

Gunpowder: Slot Verdict

It’s fair to say Peter & Sons didn’t load Gunpowder with an excessive number of features. There aren’t many extras, but the ones included can hit hard. Sticky-wild free spins—especially when multipliers are involved—have shown how dangerous they can be before, and Gunpowder leaves plenty of space for that to happen again. Of course, it all comes down to how many wilds appear, where they land, and whether they connect with paying symbols. At times they showed up in numbers, at other moments they were scarce, and Phantom Power felt erratic, but the upside is clearly there. If Gunpowder behaves, and with its pleasant naval animations, it can make for a genuinely fun session.

For a sticky wild slot, Gunpowder didn’t quite feel like a top-tier bruiser, even with a generous win cap of 10,000x the bet. Oddly, considering the theme’s firepower, it didn’t create a constant sense of imminent chaos, like it might explode at any second. The cute presentation may have softened that feeling. It can certainly spark, and some wins were satisfying, but the white-knuckle tension wasn’t as noticeable here as it is in some other heavy-hitting sticky-wild games. Still, it’s easy to picture how a hot run could leave players with a very different takeaway. That’s the nature of stacking sticky wilds—especially when some arrive carrying multipliers. Glimpses of this did show up during testing, particularly in free spins when Phantom Power helped sticky wilds spread and pack the grid with even more sticky wilds.

Like a classic cannon, Gunpowder isn’t the most advanced slot—meaning it’s not mechanically groundbreaking—but add gunpowder to a cannonball and it can absolutely punch holes through things.