Sky Bounty Slot Review
Pirate galleons that fly rather than sail, a kraken curling its tentacles around the anchor at the bottom of the screen, and a pink octopus in a plumed tricorn peering over the logo: Sky Bounty commits fully to its airborne buccaneer fantasy, and the warm sunset artwork carries it. The argument here is that a single recurring mechanic, doing duty in both the base game and the bonus round, does more work than a dozen half-formed features would.
Pragmatic Play have built the game around that one idea: a 6×5 grid with 50 paylines, high volatility, a 96.05% RTP (96.06% with the Ante Bet, 96.07% on the bonus buy) and a 5,000x win cap. The studio’s pirate pedigree runs through Pirate Gold Deluxe and Pirate Golden Age; this one swaps the Caribbean for the clouds.
Base Game & Features
All symbols pay from left to right on adjacent reels starting from the leftmost reel, across 50 fixed paylines. Only the highest win per line counts, and wins on multiple lines add together. It’s a conventional enough setup for a six-reel game.
The wild substitutes for everything except the BONUS symbol and appears on all reels. It’s also tied for the richest pays in the game, matching the top symbol at every step. Free spins and bonus wins are added to the payline win, and the free spins total is awarded once the round completes.
The BONUS symbol is a scatter in function: it appears on all reels, pays wherever it lands, and three of them anywhere on the grid are enough to open the bonus round. Six of them is the game’s single biggest scatter payday.
Symbol Values
Pays below are multiples of the total bet for three, four, five and six of a kind:
- Crossed Swords: 1.2x, 4x, 8x, 20x
- Cannon: 1x, 2.4x, 4x, 12x
- Ship’s Wheel: 0.72x, 1.8x, 3.2x, 8x
- Bottle: 0.48x, 1.4x, 2.4x, 6x
- Red Heart, Purple Gem, Orange/Yellow Hexagon Gem: 0.32x, 0.8x, 1.2x, 3x
- Orange Triangle Gem, Green Square Gem, Blue Gem, Pink Gem: 0.2x, 0.48x, 0.8x, 2x
- WILD: 1.2x, 4x, 8x, 20x
- BONUS (scatter): 3x, 10x, 30x, 100x
The structure is a straightforward two-tier ladder. Four picture symbols sit on top, a run of seven gems fills the bottom, and the wild pays as a top-tier symbol rather than a stripped substitute. High volatility means the gems land often and pay accordingly; the picture end of the table is where a base game win worth having comes from.
Random Expanding Wild Feature
At random in the base game, a square mark appears over the reels. It can be 2×2, 3×3, 4×4, 5×5 or 6×6 in size, and it lands over random positions.
Any wild that hits inside the mark expands to match the mark’s size. If more than one wild lands inside it, the expanded wild carries a multiplier equal to the number of wilds it absorbed. The multiplier applies to every win that passes through it.
The maths of that scales quickly. A 6×6 mark filled with wilds would swallow the entire grid, and each additional wild inside the mark multiplies everything the expanded symbol touches. Even a 2×2 mark with two wilds inside doubles every line that crosses it.
Only the wild reacts to the mark; every other symbol, BONUS included, ignores it. So the feature pays out through the payline system rather than around it, and a mark that lands wildless does nothing at all. The size of the mark and where it sits decide everything.
Ante Bet
Two bet multipliers are on offer. The 25x multiplier is normal play. The 30x multiplier adds more BONUS symbols to the reels, raising the chance of triggering free spins naturally, and disables the bonus buy while it’s active.
It’s a straight choice, then: pay more per spin for a better shot at the round, or keep the buy available and save the extra stake for when you want the feature on demand. Either way the game underneath doesn’t change – same grid, same symbols, same cap.
Sky Bounty Free Spins & Bonus Features
Three or more BONUS symbols trigger the free spins round. Triggering with more than three has a real payoff: four BONUS symbols start the round with one already collected, five start with two, and six start with three. Stakes run from 0.25 to 250.00 per spin.
Free Spins Round
The round begins with six free spins, and a square mark is always on the screen during it, moving to random positions on every spin. It starts as a 2×2 square.
Every BONUS symbol that lands during the round is collected, and every third one collected retriggers the feature. Each retrigger adds two free spins and grows the mark, in order, to 3×3, 4×4, 5×5 and 6×6. After the fourth retrigger, BONUS symbols stop being collected and the feature can’t retrigger again. Special reels are in play throughout.
Run the ladder end to end and the shape of the round becomes clear: a full climb takes twelve collected BONUS symbols on top of the trigger, four retriggers, eight added spins, and a mark that ends the size of the whole grid. Whether you climb at all depends entirely on how willing the reels are to keep serving up BONUS symbols once the round is running.
That’s the whole engine of the round: the mark that the base game offers as a random treat becomes permanent, and the only way to grow it is to keep landing BONUS symbols. The retrigger ladder rewards persistence with reach rather than raw spin count.
Max Win and Round Cap
The maximum win is limited to 5,000x the bet in both the base game and free spins. Reach that figure during a free spins round and it ends on the spot, with the win paid out and every remaining spin surrendered.
The cap isn’t a mark on a distant ladder, either – it applies to the total win of the round, so a long run of grown-mark spins can brush against it without ever landing a single blowout line. In a game built around multipliers, that ceiling is the thing the multipliers eventually run into.
Buy Free Spins
The free spins round can be bought instantly from the base game for 100x the current total bet. On the triggering spin after a purchase, three, four, five or six BONUS symbols can hit at random, so a buy can land you anywhere from a bare start to three symbols already collected. The buy runs at 96.07% RTP, marginally above the base figure.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.7/10
Sky Bounty is a game about one shape. The square mark is the whole story, in the base game as a random event and in free spins as a permanent fixture that grows the more you feed it. That focus is its strength: there’s no filler here, no second mechanic padding the reel set out, and the artwork sells the airborne-pirate setting without ever getting in the way of reading a win.
The weakness is the pace of the build. Six free spins and a 2×2 mark is a modest start, and the round only becomes interesting once the retriggers stack up; a buy at 100x the bet is the shortcut, but it’s not cheap and the triggering spin can still hand you the minimum. High volatility and a 5,000x cap mean the ceiling is real but distant.
It suits players who enjoy a bonus round that has to be grown rather than received, and who don’t mind a base game that saves its fireworks for the random marks. Those after instant gratification will find the opening six spins thin. For everyone else, the kraken’s bounty is worth hunting.
Sky Bounty FAQs
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How do you trigger free spins in Sky Bounty?
Land three or more BONUS symbols anywhere on the reels. Triggering with four, five or six BONUS symbols starts the round with one, two or three symbols already collected towards the first retrigger. -
How does the expanding wild mark work?
A square mark of 2×2 up to 6×6 appears over random positions. Any wild landing inside it expands to the mark’s full size, and if several wilds land inside, the expanded wild carries a multiplier equal to their number, applied to all wins passing through it. -
Can the free spins round retrigger?
Yes. Every third BONUS symbol collected during the round adds two free spins and grows the mark one size, up to 6×6 after the fourth retrigger. After that, BONUS symbols stop being collected and no further retriggers are possible. -
What is the RTP of Sky Bounty?
96.05% in normal play. The Ante Bet option runs at 96.06% and the bonus buy at 96.07%. -
Can you buy the bonus on Sky Bounty?
Yes. The free spins round can be bought for 100x your current total bet, and on the triggering spin three, four, five or six BONUS symbols can hit at random. The buy is disabled while the 30x Ante Bet is active. -
What is the maximum win on Sky Bounty?
5,000x your bet, in both the base game and free spins. If a free spins round hits that total, the round ends immediately, the win is awarded and the remaining free spins are forfeited. -
What are the bet limits and grid size?
Stakes run from 0.25 to 250.00 per spin on a 6×5 grid with 50 fixed paylines. -
What does the wild symbol substitute for?
The wild appears on all reels and substitutes for every symbol except the BONUS symbol. It also matches the top-paying symbol, Crossed Swords, at every pay tier.
