Boom Pirates

Boom Pirates comes from Foxium, a studio that's spent years building its design chops within a wider network of partner developers, and this release marks a genuine step up in ambition — reportedly delayed by close to a year in development, which tracks given the scale of what's on offer here. Built on a base 5-reel, 4-row grid with 1,024 ways to win, the game uses a mechanic branded Wonderways, which expands rows dynamically and can push the total ways to win as high as 10,077,696 in its fully extended state — numbers that put Boom Pirates squarely in the same conversation as the biggest expanding-grid slots on the market.

The theme is a well-worn favourite done well: a tropical pirate island rendered in warm, inviting shades of blue, complete with an atmospheric pirate soundtrack running underneath the action. On the reels, royal-value symbols from 10 through to Ace fill the lower tier, while five higher-value picture symbols — gunpowder barrels, cannons, colourful parrots and a tattooed pirate character among them — carry the bulk of the game's payout potential.

Two standout features drive the action beyond the base Wonderways expansion. The Boom Pirate feature randomly activates extra rows and reels mid-spin, pushing the ways to win higher on the fly, while Mary's Swashbuckling Attack can randomly convert an otherwise losing spin into a five-of-a-kind winning combination — a rare and genuinely exciting mechanic that adds unpredictability to spins that would normally just pass by unnoticed.

Numerically, Boom Pirates carries an RTP of 96.19%, comfortably above the 96% benchmark, paired with a medium-to-high volatility rating that splits the difference between steady engagement and bigger, less frequent swings. The maximum win is capped at 3,800x stake — solid, if not table-topping for a Wonderways-style game of this scale — and betting runs from 0.20 up to 50 per spin, giving reasonable flexibility across stake sizes.

Boom Pirates represents a genuine leap forward for Foxium as a studio, backing up an appealing pirate theme with mechanical ambition that matches the scale of its ways-to-win ceiling. The combination of a randomly expanding grid and a feature that can rescue a losing spin gives every round two separate reasons to stay engaged, rather than leaning on a single bonus trigger to carry the whole experience.

Given the reported development delay behind this release, it's clear a lot of care went into getting the Wonderways mechanic right rather than rushing a smaller-scale game out the door — and that extra polish shows in how coherently the expanding grid, Boom Pirate feature and Mary's Swashbuckling Attack all work together rather than feeling bolted on. If big-grid, high-ways slots are your thing, this is well worth exploring. Try the free demo at johnessyslots to see the Wonderways expansion and Mary's Swashbuckling Attack in action before playing for real money.