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Backseat Gaming is back on the high seas with Dead Man’s Broadside, a 6×5 scatter-pays grid slot. With a 15,000x max win, the same cap as their earlier Born in Hell, the potential here is undeniable. Be warned, though: this is a very volatile game, and it handles its payouts a bit differently than your standard tumble slot.
Here is our full breakdown of how it plays.
First Things First: The Flat Paytable
Let’s get this out of the way first, Dead Man’s Broadside makes no secret of its incredibly weak base paytable.
The premium symbols (the pirate captain, crossed pistols, cutlass, and rum) operate on a “flat” three-tier payout system: 8, 9-10, and 11+ symbols, while the lower-paying gems climb a step with every extra symbol from 8 to 15. Because the premium payouts cap at 11 symbols, landing a full-screen cluster of 30 premium symbols pays the exact same as a cluster of 11. And the gems pay very little: a gem group only gets your base stake back at 11 for the red one, 12 for the orange and 13 for the blue, green and purple.
Every win triggers a tumble, clearing symbols to let new ones drop in, but you will quickly realize that base payouts alone aren’t going to keep your balance afloat. So, where does the money come from?
Cannonballs & Overlapping Zones
The real firepower of the game lies entirely in three special Cannonball symbols that can drop onto the grid at any time:
- Upgrade Cannonball: This targets one gem type on the board, transforms all of them into a premium pirate symbol, and turns itself into one as well. (In my base spins it fired just once, turning six gems into crossed pistols, creating a group of eight for a modest 2.5x payout).
- Wild Block Cannonball: Drops a chunky 2×2 Wild onto the grid. It connects with all paying symbols at once, and in the bonus games it is guaranteed to join a win, often bridging two different winning groups in a single tumble.
- Multiplier Zone Cannonball: This is the star of the show. It highlights a green zone on the grid (ranging from 2×2 up to the entire 6×5 board), with every tile inside carrying a multiplier from 2x up to 1,024x.
If a winning symbol lands on a lit tile, that tile’s multiplier is added to a running total, which then boosts your payout. The brilliant part? If two zones overlap, the shared tiles add both values together.
To be completely fair, my base game experience was pretty quiet. I saw a handful of small hits, like a 1.7x double tumble and a lot of 0.2x drops, with no multiplier zones landing to save them. You can constantly feel the setup for a massive hit lurking just beneath the surface.
The Free Spins: Persistent Multipliers
Landing 3, 4, or 5 treasure chest scatters triggers 10, 20, or 30 free spins, respectively. If you want to speed things up, the game offers two paid spin modes, both at the same 96.01% RTP as the base game: Scatter Spins (which guarantees two chests land on the grid) and Bonus Boost (which simply makes the feature more likely to trigger naturally).
Once you are inside the bonus, the game pops off. Cannonballs land much more frequently, and crucially, the Multiplier Zones become persistent.
Once a zone lands, those specific grid tiles stay “lit” for the remainder of the feature. Every new zone that drops adds its value to the tiles it covers. This allows you to slowly build a cluster of incredibly high-value squares on the board. Backseat Gaming’s Born in Hell adds multipliers too, but there they sit on a shared payline and reset after every spin. Here, the multipliers are stacked directly onto the physical cells beneath the symbols, making grid positioning everything.
Hitting the Target
Because the premium payouts flatline at 11, Dead Man’s Broadside isn’t about chasing big, screen-filling clusters. The entire chase is about building a dense, overlapping cluster of “hot” multiplier zones in the middle of the board.
The absolute dream scenario, and what the game’s math model is clearly built to deliver, is dropping a 2×2 Wild Block right into the center of those high-value tiles, pulling two separate groups of premium symbols through a stacked multiplier all at once.
If you like fast-paced, constant base-game action, the flat paytable here might frustrate you. But if you are a high-volatility hunter who loves the slow, strategic build-up of persistent multipliers, Dead Man’s Broadside offers a genuinely thrilling chase.
