Pirate Bonanza: Slot Overview

Pirates may be one of the most frequently used motifs in online casinos, yet it had been a little while since the last pirate slot review. Stepping in to plug that gap—and continuing their run in the swashbuckling space—is Hacksaw Gaming partner Backseat Gaming. The result is Pirate Bonanza, and honestly, the slightly corny name didn’t exactly spark an urge to rule the high seas. Still, there’s an intriguing Cannon mechanic that scatters multiplier symbols across the grid, plus a couple of free spins rounds, so it could surprise us. By the end, we might even feel like leaning into the pirate clichés… Yarrr, anyone?

On the visual front, yes—Pirate Bonanza is unmistakably a pirate slot, with a skull-and-crossbones cloud, rolling ocean, treasure chest, a ship, and a hat-wearing captain with a cutlass posted beside a cannon on the right of the screen. It’s a bright, sunny day at sea—perfect conditions for a bit of maritime mischief. Backseat Gaming also seems to be steadily sharpening its presentation, because Pirate Bonanza is a good-looking game overall.

Pirate Bonanza is also a scatter-paying slot, meaning wins are formed when 8 or more matching symbols appear anywhere on the grid. The play area contains 30 positions, laid out across 6 reels and 5 rows. The math model volatility is listed as 4 out of 5, placing Pirate Bonanza in the medium-high range, and its maximum RTP is 96.31% when wagering 10 c to $/€100 per spin.

There are nine standard paying symbols in total. Six gem symbols make up the lower-value group, while the bottle, map, compass, and hat represent the four higher-value icons. With 8 matching symbols on screen, payouts range from 0.1 to 1 times the bet. At 19+ matching symbols, the return increases to 50 to 400 times their stake. As you’d expect for a scatter-paying slot, wild symbols never appear in the game.

Pirate Bonanza: Slot Features

It does include a tumble win feature, where winning symbols are removed and the remaining symbols drop down to fill the gaps. This repeats until the drop no longer creates a new win. Beyond that, the feature set includes the Cannon Feature, the Load The Cannon bonus, the Fire At Will bonus, and bonus buys.

Cannon Feature

Whenever a winning combination lands, every grid position involved in that win turns into a highlighted square. If a Cannon symbol is on the screen at the end of the spin, the Cannon feature activates. When triggered, Multiplier Bombs are placed onto each highlighted square. These bombs then detonate, each one revealing a multiplier value that gets added into a total multiplier. Once all bombs have revealed their values, the win is multiplied by the total multiplier. The Bomb types are:

• Low Value Bomb – these are additive and have a value of x2, x3, x4, or x5.
• Medium Value Bomb – these are additive and have a value of x10, x15, x20, or x25.
• High Value Bomb – these are additive and have a value of x50, x75, or x100.
• Golden Multiplier Bomb – these are multiplicative and have a value of x2, x3, x5, or x10.

Load The Cannons

Landing 4 scatter symbols in the base game awards 10 free spins in the Load The Cannon bonus. During this round, there is a higher chance of hitting the Cannon symbol. Landing 3 scatter symbols awards +5 free spins.

Fire At Will

In the base game, landing 5 scatter symbols triggers the Fire At Will round with 10 free spins. This feature also comes with a higher chance of landing Cannon symbols, and highlighted squares persist for the entire duration of the feature. Landing 3 scatter symbols awards +5 free spins.

Buy Bonus

Pirate Bonanza’s bonus buy offers four different choices. Each one is highly volatile.

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins – 3x the bet, each spin is 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus game. RTP 96.31%.
• BroadSide FeatureSpins – 50x the bet, each spin guarantees to land at least 1 Cannon symbol. RTP 96.31%.
• Load The Cannons – 100x the bet. RTP 96.35%
• Fire At Will – 250x the bet. RTP 96.3%.

Pirate Bonanza: Slot Verdict

With a little imagination, Pirate Bonanza can make you feel like you’re on the prow of a wooden galleon—one foot up on the rail—cutting through the waves toward a merchant ship loaded with loot. Interestingly, though, the closest comparison that came to mind during testing wasn’t another seafaring raider, but Pragmatic Play’s candy-themed slot Sugar Rush 1000. Completely different theme, of course, yet the idea of marking grid positions where winning symbols were removed instantly brought that experience back.

Even with those parallels, the two games deliver their excitement in different ways. Both can give their mechanics a persistent twist in bonus play: Sugar Rush through its growing multipliers, and Pirate Bonanza through its highlighted positions. In Pirate Bonanza, however, that persistence only shows up via the 5 scatter trigger, which is likely a steeper ask than landing 4 scatters for the lower-tier bonus. On top of that, Pirate Bonanza’s multipliers don’t stick around—only the highlighted squares do—so there can be less tension than in Sugar Rush, where big multipliers may sit on the grid waiting for a win to land on them. Pirate Bonanza feels more like an all-or-nothing swing: you don’t know the Multiplier Bomb values until they burst across the reels, and they don’t grow by stacking additional wins onto them.

As a result, Pirate Bonanza tends to deliver sudden spikes of joy—or frustration—at random. That said, it can absolutely flood the grid with chunky multiplier values to build a thrilling total multiplier, which is why its 10,000x the bet max win is achievable in all game modes. When everything clicks, Pirate Bonanza can go toe-to-toe with some of the toughest names in the scatter-paying category.