Coins and Cannons

Coins and Cannons: Slot Overview

Cluster pays and Coins, two things software provider Slotmill has adroitly handled in the past and which come together in the studio's buccaneering slot Coins and Cannons. If you were wondering, yes, this is the next step for a group of slots that includes the likes of Coin Quest and Coin Quest 2, so players can look forward to another bout of Coin symbols linking into wins via winning Coin Clusters. The quest element has been removed from Coins and Cannons, meaning no Collect Meter sucking up winning symbols. In its place, wins are potentially jacked by Cannon Multiplier symbols, which add their values together before boosting wins, whether they're of the Coin variety or not.

Coins and Cannons is a pirate slot, but it's not one that dwells on the darker side of this unorthodox (not to mention criminal) career choice. Instead, it bounces along quite joyfully on a tide of upbeat music and bright sunny weather beating down on a secluded seaside bay. One of the rock formations is in the shape of a skull, but a scary, salty, eye-patched scoundrel of a game, Coins and Cannons, is not. At least, thematically. Math model-wise, it is highly volatile, so the gameplay might throw out choppy seas.

Played on a 6x6 gaming grid, as a cluster pays slot, when 5 or more matching symbols are connected in vertical and/or horizontal positions, a winning combination is created, triggering a win and the Avalanche mechanic. As well as three feature buys, base bets of 20 c to $/€50 per spin may be picked, as well as the Xtra-Bet and Boost Mode. Activating the Xtra-Bet raises the base bet by 50%, making it 2.6 times more likely to trigger free spins. Boost Mode is a speedier way of playing the game, where players pick a stake and a number of spins with a much simplified graphical interface. Theoretically speaking, Coins and Cannons' RTP is 96.08%.

The game's pay symbols are diamonds, clubs, hearts, spades, blue gems, green gems, red gems, purple gems, and a pirate's skull. Clusters of 5 matching symbols pay out 0.2 to 1.2 times the bet, while 14+ symbol clusters are 6 to 100 times the bet in value. Another skull is imprinted on the wild symbol, which substitutes for symbols except scatters. Wilds have a value of 0x when substituting for Coins.

Coins and Cannons: Slot Features

Avalanches, Coin Clusters, Multiplier Cannons, free spins, super free spins, and Fast Track feature buys are available in Coins and Cannons.

Avalanche

All winning pay symbols, as well as any non-winning symbols of the same type as the winning symbols, pop off the reels, making space for other symbols to avalanche down and fill. After a win, a wild symbol is placed in one of the empty spaces before symbols tumble down. The Avalanche feature continues to function as long as new winning symbol combinations appear.

Coin Clusters

Coin symbols land with values of 1 to 40 times the bet. When Coin symbols make a winning cluster of 5 or more, their bet multiplier values are awarded. After the win has been paid, the winning cluster of Coins explodes, and 1 new Coin with the total Coin Cluster's win value appears in one of the empty spaces. Coin Cluster wins do not generate a wild symbol.

Bet Multiplier

The Multiplier Canon symbol lands with a value of x2 to x100. When there are no more wins, the values of all Multiplier Cannons in view are added together and applied to the payout.

Free Spins & Super Free Spins

Landing 3 scatter symbols in the base games triggers 10 free spins. In the free spins feature, Coin symbols remain on the reels at the bottom of the grid until the free spins round ends, available for new winning combinations. Hitting a +1 symbol in the bonus grants an extra free spin.

Landing 2 regular scatters plus 1 super free spins scatter awards 10 super free spins. In this feature, a Multiplier Cannon symbol is guaranteed to land on each spin. The features from free spins round are also present in super free spins.

Fast Track

Fast Track is the name of the menu where players may buy a game round guaranteeing a Multiplier Cannon for 40x the bet, free spins for 100x the bet, or super free spins for 500x the bet.

Coins and Cannons: Slot Verdict

Established fans of Slotmill can breathe a sigh of relief. After the studio surprised us with the commercial swing of Raging Riches, Slotmill is back on steady ground again. Hey, we get it. Everyone has bills to pay, and eyeing the lucrative North American market must be tempting indeed. If Raging Riches is what's going to entice members of that crowd, then it is what it is. Like your best mate experimenting with an entirely different look, maybe going cybergoth to impress a new girl or guy they like, before returning to their usual jeans and a hoodie outfit a week later, Coins and Cannons is a return to the Slotmill form that has won gamblers' affections since slots like Fruit Smash / Super Fruit Smash, Money Jar / Money Jar 2, and Tyrant's Fall came along.

Naturally, Coins and Cannons shares a closer affinity to Coin Quest and Coin Quest 2. A couple of things uniting the three games are Coins and the Coin Clusters feature. However, don't be sleeping on the excellent accumulation of Coin symbols at the bottom of the reels effect either. This particular attribute gives the game a rather unique and exciting dimension, as one Coin cluster vanishes and consolidates, then maybe later absorbed into another cluster, which consolidates, and so on it goes, a bit like My Suika or 2048. The icing on the cake, or the fire to the fuse since we're talking about cannons, is the Multiplier Cannon symbol, able to increase wins. All wins, too, not just Coin wins.

In some ways, Coins and Cannons is an 'easier' game than the Coin Quest slots because there is no quest (no filling of a Collect Meter) to reach or build a multiplier. Okay, it's not easy, but simpler since multipliers either land in the form of Cannon Multiplier symbols or they don't. However, in the case of super free spins, they hit on every spin. It's similar in some ways to the Gates of Olympus system or something Hacksaw Gaming might do, albeit with a bunch of clever Slotmill ideas thrown into the mix. Add a 15,000x the bet max win figure on the top, and Coins and Cannons is a return to form, being a playable Slotmill slot with a banging development of features.