Boomerang Studios keeps mixing things up in their Lightning Chase series, and Treasure Pirates is another installment where there are no confusing ante bet options at all. You get the Side Strike side-bet option though, allowing you to place extra bets to spice up the base game. The visuals aren’t all that impressive to be honest, but you get some cartoonish pirate symbols framed by the white sail grid.
What immediately pops out is the Roaming Sea feature, as you’ll accumulate up to 3 of these in the base game. They move around per spin, and turn into valuable symbols like wilds and cash coins, and this eventually leads to the bonus round. There are no lack of features in this game, as you get both coin collect, hold & respin and the roaming sea bonus round, but it never really added up to an entertaining experience for us.
The premium symbols pay between 1.25 and 2.5 x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, and theship’s wheel pirate captain Wildsteps in for all pay symbols to help complete wins. The wild appears on all reels except reel 1. Aspecial Collect symbolcollects all present coin symbol prizes when it appears, and the coin prizes varybetween 1x and 888x your stake.
Landing6+ coinsin view however, awards3 respinswhere all triggering coins become sticky. This is theHold & Respin feature, and the respins tally resets each time you land a new sticky coin. Landing the collect symbol immediately awards all present prizes, and the collect symbol can appear on all 5 reels.
TheScatter Shipcan appear on reel 3 only in the base game, and each instance that lands turns into a Roaming Sea symbol. TheRoaming Sea symbolsremain in play until the bonus round triggers, and this happens when you activate the 4th roaming sea symbol from a scatter ship on reel 3. Roaming sea symbols move to random positions per spin, and turn into coins, wilds or the top-tier parrot pay symbol.
During the Bonus Round, you get all4 triggering Roaming Sea symbols active, and they move to random positions per free spins on all reels except reel 3. You get5 free spins, and there is no way to retrigger the feature. The roaming wilds turn into the same 3 symbols randomly during the bonus round as well, and the roaming wilds disappear when you return to the base game.
TheSide Strike featureis also worth a mention, as it’s available in at least some jurisdictions. It’s basically a side-bet feature that allows you to win extra prizes from red or green chips that appear as small icons on random symbols. You can place your bet by hitting the Side Strike button to enter the feature interface.
You get to see the roaming sea symbols in action in the base game at first, before we trigger the bonus round at 1:15 into the 3:47-minute highlights video. We managed to trigger the Hold & Respins feature on the final free spin, starting at 1:45, and you can see for yourself how it all played out by hitting the play button below.
We had a really hard time enjoying this release, although it’s kind of hard to pinpoint exactly why. The visuals did very little for us for starters, even though we usually love pirate slots, but the presentation came across as more annoying than charming. The roaming sea scatter system is an original way to eventually get to the bonus round though, and having 2-3 of these move around per spin can certainly help in the base game.
The Collect feature adds a certain amount of tension, at least to the tune of 888x your stake, but the Hold & Respins round is fairly run-of-the-mill stuff. Getting only 5 free spins isn’t all that much, and 607.5x is the most you can get from pay symbols. You need Collect and/or Hold & Respins within the FS round to close in on the5,000x potentialin other words, and the 4 roaming sea scatters can certainly help you in that regard.
Pros
Cons
Lady Merlin Lightning Chase- is the first Boomerang installment in what’s become a series, and you get an unusual 3-4-3-4-3 setup with 432 ways to win. You get the cash collect feature, the hold & respins round and multiplier wilds to look forward to. The wild multipliers increase in the bonus round, and the max win is a solid 25,600x your stake.
Temple Frenzy Lightning Chase- is the second release in Boomerang’s lightning chase range, and it comes with a jungle theme and 178 connecta ways. Up to 888x cash symbols can land in the hold & respin feature, and you get extra wilds in the bonus round for payouts up to 17,760x your stake.
Wild Esqueleto Lightning Chase- is the third installment in the Boomerang saga, and this one is a bit complicated due to the Wild+ and Boom+ ante bet options. Up to 888x cash coins can be collected in all stages, including the hold & respins round, and Boom+ active gives you 3 bonus round options and a 5,000x potential.
