Gunpowder: Slot Overview

Boom! Gunpowder has been blowing up since the 9th century after being invented in China during the Tang dynasty. Described as one of China's 'Four Great Inventions' (the others being paper making, printing, and the compass), gunpowder has been instrumental in projecting power across the globe, both in offensive and defensive capacities. Developer Peter & Sons has used the volatile substance to add bang to its slot, Gunpowder, a game about naval warfare, boasting sticky wilds and wild spreading capabilities, some with multipliers.

Naval warfare back in the day, with all the noise, death, and destruction, must have been an absolutely horrific event, on top of the sunburn and scurvy sailors had to deal with in between battles. Fortunately, for Gunpowder, Peter & Sons has used its singular talents for painting charming pictures to make the game as inoffensively pleasing to the eyes as blowing stuff up at sea gets. Players get a bird's eye view as if playing a video game like Age of Empires, depicting a seaside town, wrecked ships and water. A transparent gaming grid sits over the sea and lands a flotilla of cute little ships as its high-paying slots.

Gunpowder is a highly volatile online slot with 10 paylines crossing its 5-reel, 3-row game board. It takes bets of 10 c to $/€50 per spin and has both a Golden Bet and a bonus buy in its arsenal. Activating the Golden Bet increases the stake by 50% increasing the chance of getting sticky wilds in the base game, as well as an increased chance of triggering free spins. The default RTP noted in Gunpowder's info section is 96.2%.

Peter & Sons have busted out the hammer nails to make the 10-A wooden card royal low pays, and when building 5 wooden ships for the high pays. Landing a line of 5 matching low pay symbols awards 2.5 to 5 times the bet, while landing a line of 5 matching high pay symbols awards 10 to 20 times the bet. Wilds are referred to as sticky wilds in Gunpowder, and substitute for any regular pay symbol to help complete winning lines.

Gunpowder: Slot Features

Gunpowder isn't exactly a game filled to the brim with a wide variety of complex features, but what it has is respins, a random Phantom Power extra, free spins where wilds stick for the duration, and a bonus buy to navigate past the base game.

Phantom Power

Phantom Power triggers randomly. When a wild lands on the reels in the base game, it triggers a respin for which it is sticky. The wild may battle high-pay symbols surrounding it. If the wild wins, the devastated ship turns into a wild, and an extra respin is awarded. In free spins, wilds can have an x2 or x3 multiplier.

Free Spins

Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols in the base game grants players 10, 12, or 15 free spins, respectively. In free spins, wilds are sticky, so they remain in their position on the reels for the remainder of the bonus round. If all reels have a wild on them, players are awarded +5 additional free spins. Phantom Power means sticky wilds can create other sticky wilds when winning their battles against high-pay symbols.

Bonus Buy

Players are able to launch the free spins round from the base game for 170x the bet. When buying the feature, 7 to 12 free spins are awarded.

Gunpowder: Slot Verdict

Fair to say Peter & Sons didn't go too overboard with the features when it set about designing Gunpowder. The game's extras aren't many, but they're able to be potent. Sticky wild free spins, particularly those involving multipliers, have proven their lethality in the past, and there is room for them to do so again in Gunpowder. Or not, depending on how many of them land, where they land, and if/how they link up with paying symbols. They landed in abundance at times, not so much at others, and the Phantom Power was unpredictable, but you can see the potential, and should Gunpowder go to plan, coupled with its pleasing naval animations, a session might be quite enjoyable.

As far as sticky wild slots go, Gunpowder didn't make the impression it was a heavyweight contender despite having a sizable win cap of 10,000x the bet. Funny, given all the firepower Gunpowder has, it didn't provoke a mood of uncontrollable danger, as if it was going to completely lose its temper at any moment. Perhaps the cute graphics cushioned the blow. No doubt it might pop, and some results were tasty, but the edge-of-the-seat gaming wasn't as apparent in Gunpowder as in certain other hard-hitting slots with sticky wild features. It's not difficult to imagine, if Gunpowder were running hot, how lucky players could form a different impression though. Such are the capabilities of building up a pile of sticky wilds, not forgetting some may have brought multipliers on board with them. Tastes of this did admittedly occur when testing the slot, during free spins when sticky wilds were successfully crowding the grid with more sticky wilds via the Phantom Power.

Like an old-fashioned cannon, Gunpowder isn't the most sophisticated slot, as in, it's not super cutting edge original mechanically, but bring gunpowder to cannonball, and it can surely blast holes in things.