Cannonball Cash Slot Review
A galleon’s gun deck sits beached on a tropical shore, reels bolted into gilded timber while chests spill gold across the sand. The odd thing about Cannonball Cash, from Red Tiger, is that its paytable barely matters: a grid where even the best symbol pays 1x for three of a kind is a grid where the whole game rides on what happens after a win, not on the win itself.
That’s a bolder design than the tropical postcard suggests. It’s a 5×3 grid with 243 ways to win, running at 95.72% RTP, with stakes from 0.1 to 50 per spin and a maximum win of 7,465x the bet.
Players who know Pirates Plenty or Pirates Plenty 2 will recognise the territory, with Vault Cracker the closest thing in the studio’s catalogue to this kind of escalating collect game.
How the Base Game Pays
Wins pay across 243 ways, meaning matching symbols on adjacent reels from the left count regardless of position. Only the highest combination per way pays. Just over two spins in five land a win of some kind, at a hit frequency of 42.75%.
The wild stands in for all paying symbols and can land only on reels 2, 3 and 4. All symbol values are multiples of the total bet:
- Captain/Parrot: 1x for three, 2x for four, 50x for five
- Treasure Chest: 0.6x for three, 1x for four, 10x for five
- Gold Coins: 0.4x for three, 0.8x for four, 2x for five
- Hook/Charm: 0.3x for three, 0.6x for four, 1x for five
- Bottle: 0.3x for three, 0.6x for four, 1x for five
- A and K: 0.2x for three, 0.3x for four, 0.5x for five
- Q, J and 10: 0.2x for three, 0.3x for four, 0.4x for five
- Wild: substitutes for all paying symbols, reels 2, 3 and 4 only
The spread tells its own story. There’s a steep drop from the top symbol to everything under it, and the royals are worth fractions of the stake. Individual base wins are small by design; the money in this game lives in the ladder and the bonus round, not in the paytable.
The gap between the theme symbols and the card symbols is where most spins land. A line of treasure imagery pays several times what the same line of royals would, but even the better outcomes barely cover the spin that produced them. That’s the arithmetic the Chain Reaction and the ladder exist to fix, and they’re the reason a thin-looking paytable can still sit under a 7,465x ceiling.
Chain Reaction
Every winning spin sets off a chain reaction. Symbols that form wins disappear, making way for new symbols to drop in. Those new symbols can form further wins, and the reaction keeps going as long as fresh wins keep landing, so a single paid spin can string together several payouts in a row.
That mechanic matters more here than it usually would, because consecutive wins are exactly what feeds the ladder. A chain reaction isn’t just extra money; it’s forward progress on the track where the game’s real prizes sit.
Three things can happen on any spin in the normal game:
- A win triggers the Chain Reaction, removing winning symbols and dropping in new ones
- A win screen activates one step of the Cannonball Ladder
- A Chain Reaction within free spins keeps merged wilds locked on the middle reel
The Cannonball Ladder
A ladder of nine levels runs alongside the reels in the normal game. Every spin that forms a win screen activates one step. From the third step onwards, each consecutive win awards a pick.
The steps carry multiplier labels of x3, x5, x10, x20, x50 and x100 from the fourth level up, with the first three levels unlabelled. Those are multiples of stake, not fixed prizes, so what each step is worth scales with the bet behind it.
The design rewards streaks rather than single hits. A win is worth its paytable value on its own, but a win that keeps a chain alive is also a step towards the multiplier territory at the top of the ladder.
Reaching that territory takes consecutive wins, and the base paytable doesn’t hand them out cheaply. The wild helps, standing in for any paying symbol on the three middle reels, but a wild-assisted win climbs the ladder exactly one step like any other. There’s no shortcut to the top; there are only nine rungs and one way up them.
Free Spins
The Free Spins symbol appears on the reels and triggers the bonus round. Inside it, the wilds change behaviour: they merge on the middle reel and stay locked there for the duration.
Locked wilds on the centre reel are a meaningful upgrade. With 243 ways paying across adjacent reels, a stacked, sticky middle reel does most of the work of building wins on every remaining spin, and it stacks on top of the chain reaction.
A chain inside the bonus clears symbols, drops new ones, and the wilds stay put through all of it, so every reaction in the round runs through the centre of the grid. The paytable doesn’t change; what changes is that the most useful symbol on it stops moving.
Free spins in this game are less a separate mode and more the base game with its best piece welded in place. And because consecutive wins still feed the ladder’s step logic, a productive free spins chain is doing two jobs at once: paying its own wins and climbing the multiplier labels with every reaction it survives.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.1/10
Most of your time on this beached galleon is spent waiting. The base game pays crumbs, and the reason to choose it is the rare run where a chain catches, the ladder starts climbing and the free spins weld wilds to the middle reel – that’s the moment all the thin paytable stuff has been building towards, and when it arrives, it pays like a different game.
The best thing here is that the three mechanics pull in one direction: a single hot chain advances the reaction, the ladder and the sticky wilds all at once, so a good round compounds instead of paying out in dribs.
The worst thing is the arithmetic between those rounds. Because only consecutive wins count, a session of well-spaced single wins earns almost nothing and goes nowhere, and that describes most sessions. This is a game for players who like a long, quiet build with a genuine 7,465x reason to sit through it. If you want your wins to mean something on their own, the gold on this shore isn’t yours.
Cannonball Cash FAQs
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How does the Cannonball Ladder work?
A nine-level ladder sits beside the reels in the normal game. Every spin that forms a win screen activates one step, and from the third step onwards each consecutive win awards a pick. The upper levels carry multiplier labels from x3 up to x100. -
What do wilds do in the Cannonball Cash free spins round?
In free spins, wilds merge on the middle reel and stay locked there. That stacks sticky wilds on the centre of a 243-ways grid for the duration of the round. -
How does the Chain Reaction feature work?
Winning symbols vanish and new ones drop into the gaps. The new symbols can form further wins, and the reaction continues as long as fresh wins keep landing on a single paid spin. -
Where can wild symbols land in Cannonball Cash?
In the base game they appear only on reels 2, 3 and 4. In free spins they merge and lock on the middle reel. -
What is the RTP of Cannonball Cash?
The RTP is 95.72%. A slightly lower setting of 95.65% applies to some shop play options. -
What is the maximum win on Cannonball Cash?
The maximum win is 7,465x the bet. -
How many ways to win does Cannonball Cash have?
It’s a 5×3 grid with 243 ways to win. Matching symbols on adjacent reels from the left pay regardless of their position. -
What is the hit frequency of Cannonball Cash?
Roughly 42.75% of spins land a win of some kind, with the Chain Reaction able to extend any of them into further payouts.
