Cannonade!

Cannonade!: Slot Overview

Casino game maker Yggdrasil Gaming has proven a dab hand at piraty/high seas slots as seen previously in Pirates Smugglers Paradise and Pirates 2: Mutiny. Now the team is back, bobbing up and down on the water in an online slot they've named Cannonade! If you were wondering, Google's definition of a cannonade is 'a period of continuous heavy gunfire', which brought to mind olden times galleons sailing up to each other before letting rip with every cannon on board. When you think of the noise, all of those cannon balls flying around shredding through sails, and wooden planks, it must have been terrifying. More so since if the galleon sank, what could you do? There were no mobile phones or rescue choppers coming to pick anyone up.

Now back to Cannonade!, which presents a romanticised version of naval warfare based around weighing anchor, searching for treasure, and fighting off pirates. The fiery action is presented on a 5-reel, 6-row grid, slapped on a boat bristling with cannons, carvings and sails. At the start of the base game, half of the reel positions (15) are active, while the other half are inactive, covered by blocker tiles. The inactive position can be unlocked when winning ways start landing. The rest of the base game scene depicts ships floating on the water under an ominous dark cloudy sky transitioning to a blazing sunrise or sunset on the horizon like a Turner painting. It's certainly swashbuckling; let's mosey on.

Available on any device, there are a number of ways of possibly tackling Cannonade!, depending on the market. One is by simply picking a bet of 20 p/c to $/€20 and banging away on the spin button. Another way is by activating the Golden Bet, which increases the stake by 50% to have extra scatter symbols on the reels, boosting the chance of triggering free spins. The third is by buying free spins. In all cases, it appears the maximum return to player value is 96%, though lower models may be available, and volatility has been classified as 'Super High'.

In the default fifty-ftifty inactive/active grid state, players get 120 ways to win, rising to 7,776 when all positions have been unlocked. Wins occur when identical symbols land on adjacent reels, starting from the leftmost side of the panel. Ten pay symbols appear on the board. The first six are axes, rifles, cannons, swords, and pistols, paying 0.2 to 0.3x for five of a kind, then four seafaring type characters worth 0.4 to 2 times the stake for five of a kind. Last but not least, there are no wild symbols to be found in Cannonade!

Cannonade!: Slot Features

When winning ways hit, they trigger Cannonade!'s Win Streak feature. The winning symbols are locked in place, and one blocked position from the reels they landed on is removed allowing new symbols to appear there. Then, the unlocked symbols respin. If new winning symbols hit, they are locked in place as well, remove blocked positions from their reels, and another respin occurs. If more than one symbol type creates a win, the lowest-value winning symbol is upgraded to the highest-paying locked symbol. This continues until no new winning symbol hits, then a win evaluation takes place.

Free Spins

Collecting 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols on a single spin awards 6, 9, or 12 free spins, respectively. Before free spins start, players may have the option of gambling them to possibly win more or collect what was awarded and go right into the feature. To gamble, a red and green segmented wheel spins. Landing on green awards +3 free spins, while landing on red loses all free spins. Win Streaks remain active in free spins, and the rules are the same as the base game, with one exception. During the feature, when a scatter symbol lands, it awards +1 free spins, and the lowest paying symbol is removed from the reels.

Buy Bonus

If available, Cannonade! comes with two bonus buy choices. One costs 100x the bet and gets you 6 free spins, or 500x the bet for 15 free spins.

Cannonade!: Slot Verdict

The Streak Wins, sticky win concept, whilst not super common, is one that arises from the depths every now and then. NetEnt popularised them in amclassic slots like Jack Hammer and Long Pao, Quickspin in Blue Fortune, and Thunderkick in Odin's Gamble. If those online slots tickled your fancy, then consider having a crack at Cannonade! too. It does things with the mechanic rarely, if ever seen before, while using the sticking winning symbol/respin process. It does so in a fairly absorbing maritime setting which, while not the most imaginative theme, has been handled pretty well, for the most part, to create a sensation of salty danger; though the quick shifts between game phases were a little abrupt.

On to Win Streaks, and what's interesting is that they've been combined with a blocker tile removal element, clearing the way for new symbols to land on the board and boosting ways to win in the process. There are certainly a lot more possible ways to win in Cannonade! then there were in the games mentioned above, and clearing blocker tiles can be satisfying. In addition, there's the chance, though it wasn't easy to do during testing, of removing lower-paying symbols from the reels during free spins - theoretically upping the chances of streaking together better value symbol wins. On the subject of wins, Cannonade! delivers a sizable number, as the load screen touts potential of up to 20,000x the bet.

All in all, Cannonade! should be an intriguing option for gamblers into this style of play. It didn't feel quite as sharp as some of Yggdrasil's A* slots, although we might have been affected by the memory of Calavera Crush, which despite being a completely different type of game, was strangely brought to mind. Anyway, Cannonade! has its innovative moments, and as mentioned, if this method of building wins appeals, the game is worth a bash.