Bounty Bonanza

Bounty Bonanza Slot Review

The sun is going down on a frontier main street, a weathered BANK sign hanging off the false-front building on the left and a wagon wheel parked beside a barrel on the packed dirt. It’s the hour outlaws do their best work, and Amatic has built Bounty Bonanza around exactly that moment. A game this traditional has no business running at 97.04% RTP, well above the going rate for a line-pay title.

It’s a 5×4 reel set with 10 paylines, and the premise ties it together: the portrait characters are bandits, and during the bonus each one carries a price on its head. There’s no wild, no second screen, no mini-game. One well-made hunt instead. Amatic’s back catalogue sits nearby, with Book Of Montezuma, Multi Billyonaire and Grand Wild Dragon covering similar ground.

The Street, The Lines and The Paytable

The town behind the reels is painted rather than modelled: orange-pink sky with streaked clouds above the rooftops, purple shadows falling across the storefronts, cobblestones running along the bottom of the frame. A wooden post stands in the foreground, and a dark-windowed building catches the last of the light on the right edge. It’s a lush piece of illustration for a game whose reel set is otherwise traditional, and the contrast works in its favour. The scene doesn’t animate so much as glow.

The layout is five reels by four rows, which gives the 10 lines more room than a standard 5×3 would. Every win starts on the leftmost reel and runs rightwards across adjacent reels, so a gap in the middle of a line kills the combination. There’s no wild symbol in this game at all, which is unusual for a line-pay title.

What fills the gap is the cast. Four portrait characters sit at the top of the paytable, and each of them is also a BANDIT for the purposes of the bonus round. The lower end of the table is Western props and card royals:

Symbol Values

Pays are the values as printed on the game’s information screen, for symbols landing left to right on adjacent reels:

• Mustache man: 10 for two, 100 for three, 1,000 for four, 5,000 for five
• Woman: 50 for three, 500 for four, 2,000 for five
• Black man: 10 for two, 30 for three, 100 for four, 1,000 for five
• Joker / laughing man: 10 for two, 20 for three, 75 for four, 500 for five
• Horseshoe / whiskey bottle: 15 for three, 50 for four, 250 for five
• A, K, Q, J, 10: 10 for three, 30 for four, 100 for five
• WANTED poster: 20 for three

That top step is steep. The mustache man pays 5,000 for five, ten times what the same combination of jokers returns, and he even pays a little on two. The portraits are spaced out sensibly too: the woman and the black man both clear 1,000 for five, so the top tier isn’t a single peak with a cliff behind it.

The royals are the filler you’d expect, though a five-royal at 100 keeps the floor from being entirely token. Any five BANDIT symbols across the reels also win, according to the game’s own information screen. The portraits feed two systems at once: the paytable in the base game, and the bounty hunt once the bonus arrives.

The Bounty Bonus

Getting into the round is a single condition, and the game keeps it honest:

• Three WANTED symbols anywhere on the reels, in any position, award 10 bonus spins
• A double-chance option can be switched on to improve the odds of the trigger landing
• A bonus buy button sits in the side panel for going straight in

The WANTED poster is the scatter of the piece, paying 20 for three on its own account. Because it triggers from any position rather than a fixed line, the 5×4 grid works in its favour: four rows mean more cells per reel, and more cells mean more places for a poster to land. Three of them buy the passage from the quiet main street into the hunt proper.

How the Bounty Works

During the bonus, a bounty is placed on each BANDIT symbol that lands. The BOUNTY HUNTER symbol appears only in this round, on all reels, and each one collects every bounty on the screen and adds the lot to your wins.

It’s a collection mechanic with a wide footprint. One hunter scoop can sweep several bandits at once, and multiple hunters in a single spin each do the same job, so a busy screen compounds quickly. Every portrait that lands during the round is in play: matched on a line it pays its table value, mixed with other BANDITs it counts towards the five-BANDIT win, and sat beside a hunter it surrenders its bounty.

Free games are capped, and the game warns when the maximum number has been reached. The elegance is in the dual role of the portraits. A mustache man landing in the bonus isn’t just a line-pay symbol; he’s carrying his own price as well, and the hunter who collects him takes both. Nothing extra to learn, no second paytable to memorise, just the same faces worth more.

Because the hunter only appears in the bonus, the base game stays a pure line-pay affair: you spin, you hit or you don’t, and the WANTED posters are the only thing breaking up the rhythm. The double-chance option exists precisely for that stretch of road between triggers, and the buy button is the shortcut for anyone who’d rather skip the ride in. Either way, the round you arrive at is the same one.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.7/10

Riding through this one is a lot of quiet main street between hold-ups. You spin, the portraits either line up or they don’t, and the only sound of hooves is three WANTED posters landing somewhere on the grid. The reason to take the ride at all is that single bonus, and it’s a good one: the same faces that pay the table all carry prices on their heads, so a busy screen with a hunter or two on it settles up several ways at once.

The bounty collection is the best thing in the game, because it takes a cast you already know and makes every one of them worth double. The weakness is everything around it: there’s no wild and no second feature, so long stretches between triggers are just line-pay filler with a nice sunset behind it.

For players who like an old-fashioned reel set, a generous return and one well-made round rather than a menu of them, this is an easy town to stop in. Anyone chasing features every few spins should keep riding.

Bounty Bonanza FAQs

• How do you trigger the bonus on Bounty Bonanza?

  Three WANTED symbols on any position award 10 bonus spins. A double-chance option is also available to improve the odds of triggering the round.
• What does the Bounty Hunter symbol do?

  The Bounty Hunter appears only during the bonus round, on all reels. Each one collects all bounties placed on the BANDIT symbols on screen and adds them to your wins.
• Can the bonus spins retrigger on Bounty Bonanza?

  There’s no retrigger rule for the spins. The game does warn when the maximum number of free games has been reached, so the round has a hard stop.
• Is there a wild symbol in Bounty Bonanza?

  No, there’s no wild symbol. The portrait characters carry the game instead, and the BOUNTY HUNTER, which only appears during the bonus, is the closest thing to a special symbol.
• What do five BANDIT symbols pay?

  Any five BANDIT symbols pay 100 as a mixed combination, whichever faces they are. Individually, the portraits pay much more, up to 5,000 for five mustache men on a line.
• What is the RTP of Bounty Bonanza?

  The RTP is 97.04%, which is comfortably above the industry average.
• Can you buy the bonus on Bounty Bonanza?

  Yes, a bonus buy button is available in the game’s side panel, alongside a double-chance option for triggering the round naturally.
• Who makes Bounty Bonanza?

  Bounty Bonanza is made by Amatic. Its release date is 5 May 2022.