Baam Boom Slots
Set sail on a sea adventure aboard a pirate ship to sink ships and pillage gold coins on Baam Boom, Playtech’s latest slot creation. Relive some of your childhood moments when playing the popular “Sink Battleships” board game, and shoot your cannons to sink ships on up to five maps with increasing coin rewards. Initially exclusively produced for Ladbrokes, Baam Boom was later rolled out networkwide. Now players can spin the reels at any online casino offering Playtech slots.
Playtech is one of the established game providers in the online casino world. Some millennials would even dub it a dinosaur, because it was founded in the late 90s. The company ascended to become one of the world’s leading game suppliers in the online market, and today it forms part of the FTSE index after a successful listing on the London Stock Exchange. Organic growth as well as multiple acquisitions saw the company broaden its portfolio to offer slot cabinets, online video slots, online bingo, scratch cards, table games, and live casino studios.
The Sailing Slot Reels
Murky ocean waters provide the fitting backdrop to an unusually simple game window which has been optimized for mobile play. The reels are held on a mapping background reminiscent of the board game. Pay symbols and graphics don a medieval style that goes well with the pirate theme. One hiccup, however, is the soundtrack, which we turned off rather quickly. For some reason unknown to us, Playtech chose a fast-paced 80s guitar tune that jars with the slot theme.
Baam Boom has 10 regular pay symbols, one wild symbol and one bonus symbol. The pay symbols on the low end include the usual 9s to As suits. On the medium-paying level in ascending order of value are beer mugs, barrels, handguns and cannons. The top-paying and wild symbol depicts a cross made of red skeleton bones on a golden cannonball, which changes to red and blue in the Treasure Chest feature. The bonus symbols appear as white skulls on a deep red tile.
The Pirate Numbers and Stats
Baam Boom is a video slot with five reels, three rows and 20 paylines. The slot features include wild substitutions, a Treasure Chest feature with up to 30 free spins, and a bonus feature after five wilds are collected on the meter on top of the game window. The RTP of this low-to-medium-variance game is set at 96.35%. Wins for a single five of a kind range from 2.5x to 33.33x the bet.
Bet sizes start at a strange 0.30 coins for 25 paylines – as opposed to the usual 0.25 coins – and peak at a high-roller-friendly 300 coins. AutoPlay allows players to choose from five to 100 consecutive spins, with a range of options as to when the run should stop. The slot is in HTML5 format and can be played on desktop, mobile, and tablet across all OS platforms.
The Treasure Chest Bonus Feature
Three, four or five skull scatters will award the Treasure Chest bonus game. Players will receive 10, 20 or 30 free spins, plus a coin win of five, 50 or 100 times their bet, corresponding to the number of scatters that triggered the feature. The free spins are played with no other multipliers or reel modifiers, but landing cannonball wild symbols will be collected in the meter on top of the game window. These will be used at a later stage. Free spins cannot be retriggered.
After the free spins, the game leads to a second screen with a treasure map. Players can now aim at the map grid and fire the collected cannonball wilds to locate the hidden treasure gems with a varying coin win amount. At levels one and two, the maps contain up to four pointers indicating the location of gems. There are eight prizes on each map, and finding five will advance the player to the next map.
In total, there are five maps with coin wins increasing at each level. The maximum total win on the last map peaks at 166x the initial stake, which will be added to the wins from the free spins and the first four maps.
The Wild Bonus Feature
During the base game, any wild symbol landing on the reels is collected in the wild meter on top of the game window. Once five wilds are collected, this will trigger the wild bonus feature and award one of the five maps from the treasure chest bonus game with five cannonballs. The feature consists of only one map, and it will not advance to the next level if five gems are located.
Other Pillaging Reels
Pirates, cannonballs, sinking ships, treasure chests, and golden coins are all ingredients for exciting video slots. Some of the best examples are Incinerator from Elk Studios and Turn It Up! from Microgaming
Our Pirate Verdict
We slot-playing folk like to plunder the reels for big wins on any video slot. So it’s no wonder that most of us like pirate-themed games, as these combine entertaining gameplay with the chance to hit that big treasure.
The slot from Playtech places exactly in this category. On top of that, it helps revive some good childhood memories for the older generation among us who grew up with the “Sink Battleships” board game. The younger players will also know the game from the countless apps available on their smartphones.
What we didn’t like on Baam Boom is the rather low variance and low win potential which peaks well below 1,000x the bet. Still, it’s a very entertaining game with plenty of pillaging action on the reels. That’s reason enough to get your pirate gear on and set sail in search of those treasure chests.
