Indiana Bones

Indiana Bones Slot Review

Behind a jungle ruin’s cracked stone lintel, where ivy hangs over carved dog-headed pillars and a turquoise sky blurs into foliage beyond the stone frame, High 5 Games have done something quietly unusual: they’ve built a 5×3, 20-payline game where the base game, not the bonus round, is the main event.

That’s the claim worth testing. The game runs at 96.0% RTP, and its scatter round awards a plain 10 free games with nothing extra attached. All the invention has gone into a wild mechanic that keeps paying for three spins after it triggers, fed by the gems on the reels. It’s a narrower brief than 88 Drums or Arctic Sky, and less showy than Da Vinci DeluxeWays.

Base Game and Symbols

Wins land on the game’s 20 fixed paylines, with line wins needing adjacent reels from the leftmost. Only the highest combination pays on each line, and every line win is multiplied by the bet per line. It’s traditional five-reel maths, the sort that’s been paying out since long before anyone put dog heads on the pillars.

The cast is small and evenly spaced. A wolf in a fedora leads the pays, followed by a dog in a cap and a purple hyena, with three gems and the royals A, K and Q filling out the low end. The values, per symbol, in credits before any bet modifiers are applied:

• Wolf in fedora – 3 pays 25, 4 pays 100, 5 pays 250
• Dog in cap – 3 pays 15, 4 pays 60, 5 pays 150
• Purple hyena – 3 pays 10, 4 pays 40, 5 pays 100
• Green, orange or purple gem – 3 pays 4, 4 pays 20, 5 pays 40
• A, K or Q – 3 pays 2, 4 pays 10, 5 pays 20

The gaps between tiers are steep. Five wolves pay ten times what four do, and the royals drop to 2 credits at the bottom rung, so a line of low symbols barely registers while a full premium line does real work. That steepness is what gives the wild mechanic its teeth later on.

The gems are the cheapest symbols in the game, and also the most important, because each colour is tied to one of the three face wilds in the Lasting Loot feature. When a gem turns wild, it stops being a 4-credit filler and starts standing in for anything except the Bonus symbol.

The wilds themselves come in two families. The green, orange and purple gem wilds exist only as a result of the Lasting Loot feature. The face wilds – bulldog, fox and wolf – land only on reel five, and all of them substitute for every symbol except the Bonus scatter.

Any mix of three or more wilds on a line is itself a win, paying 50 for three, 250 for four and 1,000 for five. That makes a full wild line the richest combination in the game, four times the value of five wolves. A reel-five face counts towards that combination too, so the trigger itself can be part of the game’s richest line.

Lasting Loot Activated Wilds

This is the feature the whole game is arranged around, and the reason the gem symbols exist. A bulldog, fox or wolf wild in any position on reel five initiates it, and each face owns one gem colour for the duration.

The transformations run colour by colour:

• Bulldog wild transforms all green gems on the reels to wilds for the current and next three spins
• Fox wild transforms all orange gems for the same window
• Wolf wild transforms all purple gems for the same window

The timing matters. The transformation covers the spin that triggered it as well, so the first of the four spins is already fully wild wherever that colour appears, and the window then holds for the next three spins before the gems revert.

While the feature runs, the triggering face on reel five is swapped out for its matching gem for the next three spins, so the same trigger can’t simply repeat itself. Wins are evaluated only after all transformations are complete, and any feature progress earned applies at the total bet that was active when it started.

Take a screen carrying five green gems when the bulldog lands on reel five. Every one of those gems turns wild immediately, and anything of that colour arriving over the following three spins comes in wild too. Because wilds in any mix form winning lines, a colour-heavy screen is worth far more than its paytable row suggests.

What that gives you is a four-spin window in which every gem of one colour has turned wild. Because gems are also the game’s filler symbols, the feature doesn’t need a rare symbol to pay well; it needs a screen with plenty of one colour on it. It’s a mechanic with real payout logic behind it, and it’s the one thing here that behaves like a modern feature.

Free Games Bonus

The Bonus symbol is a treasure chest scatter, and it only appears on reels two, three and four. Three of them, in any position on those reels, start the Free Games Bonus. As a scatter, the chest doesn’t need to sit on a payline or on adjacent reels to count.

The round awards 10 free games. There’s no picker, no multiplier ladder, nothing bolted on. What the free games do have is the same reel five the base game has, which means the Lasting Loot feature can fire mid-round and carry its four-spin wild window through the remaining spins.

That’s the entire design: a plain scatter round whose value comes entirely from a mechanic borrowed from the base game. A bonus inside a bonus, in effect, and it works because the wilds are already the game’s best-paying line.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.1/10

Playing Indiana Bones is mostly watching reel five. Somebody would choose this game precisely because the action never leaves the base game: the trigger lands, a colour turns wild, and the next three spins carry a charge the scatter round can’t match. It’s a jungle dig where the good stuff is already at the surface.

The strength is how earned the wild mechanic feels – four spins of colour-matched wilds, rooted in symbols the paytable treats as filler, and a wild line worth four times the top symbol. The weakness is everything around it: the Free Games Bonus brings nothing of its own, and the paytable’s ceiling sits low once you look past the wilds.

This suits players who enjoy a build rather than a detonation, and who’d take a four-spin wild window over a jackpot ladder. It isn’t for anyone chasing a headline payout – this ruin pays out to patient hands, not dynamite.

Indiana Bones FAQs

• How does the Lasting Loot Activated Wilds feature work?

  A bulldog, fox or wolf wild landing anywhere on reel five triggers the feature. The face transforms all gems of its matching colour – green for the bulldog, orange for the fox, purple for the wolf – into wilds for the current spin and the next three spins.
• How do you trigger the Free Games Bonus in Indiana Bones?

  You need three treasure chest Bonus symbols, which can appear on reels two, three and four. They’re scatters, so they count in any position on those reels, and three of them start the bonus.
• How many free games does the Free Games Bonus award?

  The bonus awards 10 free games. The Lasting Loot feature can activate during the round, which is where much of its value comes from.
• How long does the Lasting Loot feature last?

  The transformation applies to the current spin and the next three spins, so the effect runs for a four-spin window. The triggering face wild on reel five is replaced by its matching gem for those next three spins.
• What do the wild symbols substitute for in Indiana Bones?

  All wilds substitute for every other symbol except the Bonus scatter. Any mix of three or more wilds on a payline also counts as a winning combination in its own right, paying up to 1,000 for five.
• What is the RTP of Indiana Bones?

  The theoretical return to player is 96.0%.
• How many paylines does Indiana Bones have?

  Indiana Bones has 20 fixed paylines on a 5×3 grid. Line wins need adjacent reels from the leftmost, and only the highest combination pays on each line.
• Who makes Indiana Bones?

  Indiana Bones was created by High 5 Games, who also own the Lasting Loot Activated Wilds trademark.